Doll Dance - Nacio Herb Brown

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#med (Music.Every.Day)
Day 139 of my daily video posting project. I have been working on this project since November 2023--posting a video of piano music every single day!
Today's video is "Doll Dance" by Nacio Herb Brown. This piece is nostalgic for me. My first official lessons were at a tiny studio in Ottawa (that is no longer there) where I began with organ lessons! After finishing the 8 book course in two years, my teacher suggested that I switch to Piano! As I said before, a bunch of us used to compete at local festivals. One of the piano teachers used to assign us duet partners yearly.
I got partnered with an excellent student named Christine. She was a senior and I think it must have been her last year playing with the studio--If I remember correctly, she was off to University in the Fall. It's too bad we didn't get together sooner, I remember that we played really well together. The piece that we ended up performing (and winning with!) was a duet version of this song. We did go through a bunch of other duets that either she didn't like, or I didn't like, and we finally settled on this one, that we both liked!
When I play this (solo) version, I still get flashbacks on how we used to perform together. Christine had the Secondo (bass) part, and I played the Primo part. I remember how well she used to "roll" the chords in the second section, and her bass part solidly drove the whole piece.
Nacio Herb Brown may be unfamiliar to you as a songwriter, but almost everyone knows "Singing In The Rain", which he composed! You'll hear elements of that kind of happy music in this piece. The piece is not without its' challenges. Especially in the solo version!! There are big leaps from octave bass up to complicated chords, there are parallel fourth passages that are tricky to play with the right hand, and some very challenging rhythmic triplets with double notes that took a lot of practice.
Tune in tomorrow for more of my music.every.day experiment!