Frank French House Concert - Sunday, April 6, 2008, 2 p.m.

Selected excerpts from Frank French's CDs
(CD's available on Frank's web site: click here.)

Womba Bomba (Frank French) from 'terra verde' Pinelands Recordings, 1996, et al

El Cocoyé (Louis Moreau Gottschalk)

CANDELA...I got the idea this piece by stealing some melodic material from an etude of Chopin and applying a different kind of rhythmic inflection. The result was a new piece of music is in which the rhythm is driven by the superimposition of the five-beat clave pulse with syncopation in both hands. In Cuba "Candela" is a vernacular expression for high-spirited activity throughout the night, something like "burning the candle down." It may as well be a generic word for a style of music since to many different works have been so named. Today we might categorize this piece as "terra verde" written in "tempo de madrugar" Click here to watch a live performance on YouTube.