The unusual and compelling instrumental pairing of saxophone and accordion has received impressive advocacy in recent years from the duo of Canadian saxophonist David Zucchi and Spanish accordionist Iñigo Mikeleiz-Berrade, whose repertoire ranges from reimagined classics to newly commissioned works and improvisation. Their debut album ContraDANCE gathers five works which draw in different ways on the rhythms, contexts
and sheer ebullience of popular dance forms. Scottish composer Aileen Sweeney evokes the northern lights in music which draws on the folk traditions of Norway and Shetland.
The duo’s own transcriptions of suites by Granados, Ravel and Bartók bear witness
to the presence of folk styles and idioms stretching from the Mediterranean and Central Europe to North Africa in their respective composers’ musical imaginations, while Alex Paxton’s unforgettable Water Butt: lovers, snorkel transcends place and time in an unrelenting build-up of joy and bodily ecstasy.