Martin Pyne - Spirits of Absent Dancers

An elegant suite of 19 short pieces for solo vibraphone and percussion. Martin Pyne spends the majority of his professional life working with dance. When the 2020 lockdown kicked in, Pyne felt the loss of the time usually spent in dance studios very keenly.

He says I found myself imagining a lone musician in a deserted theatre, like a kind of medicine man, throwing sounds into the space in an attempt to conjure up the ghosts of dancers no longer present, to breathe movement into stillness. I've named the vibraphone pieces using various words for spells or enchantments, and the other pieces after words for spirits or ghosts. Much of the music is very quiet and mysterious but there are plenty of more energetic and playful episodes.

Martin Pyne - vibraphone, percussion, toy piano