Diablo Symphony with Violinist Terrie Baune

Violinist Terrie Baune performs Libby Larsen’s “Dancing Man Rhapsody” with the Diablo Symphony on February 9, 2:00 p.m., Lesher Center for the Arts. Celebrating the variety of dance music composed in the United States, the program also features works by American composer Florence Price and Russian émigré Sergei Rachmaninov. Price originally composed her Suite of Dances as a set of piano pieces, later arranged if for wind band with the subtitles “Hoe Cake,” Rabbit Foot,” and “Ticklin’ Toes.” She reset the dances, which reflect her African American heritage, for symphony orchestra in 1951. The third movement incorporates a juba, the fast-paced dance with “body percussion” performed on plantations by slaves prohibited from having drums. Larsen’s “Dancing Man Rhapsody,” written for Braun in 2016, conveys the image of a “guy dancing his way through the world—doing a conga and a stroll.” Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances echoes the homeland he fled in 1917. Its prominent use of the alto saxophone, however, reveals an American jazz influence as well.