A pavane is a Renaissance dance. French composers of the late 1800's revived the form (or at least the title). The Pavane by Gabriel Fauré is a sensuous excursion into French music, full of exoticism and lush harmony. Simple Pleasures was originally a solo guitar composition featured on a previous album of the same title. Here the piece has been arranged for guitar and flute. I hope you enjoy the transformation. Brazilian composer Luis Bonfa wrote Black Orpheus as part of his film score for Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). We love playing this classic Latin tune. No one wrote more luxurious melodies than the great opera composer Giaccomo Puccini. The beautiful aria O mio caro ( formally titled O mio babbino caro) is from the opera Gianni Schicchi, first performed in 1918. Antonio Vivaldi composed approximately five hundred concertos during his lifetime. His most recognized pieces are the four concertos in a series called The Four Seasons, a staple of the Baroque repertoire. Each concerto, consisting of three movements, illustrates Vivaldi's expression of a particular season of the year. Thus, we have the "singing birds" (violins) of "Spring" and so on. The Andante from "Winter" while appropriately stark and mercifully short, is nonetheless quite lovely. Danny's Bossa is my take on the Brazilian bossa nova style. The Lullaby for Weymouth was composed in 2007, and first titled simply Lullaby. We used the piece as theme music for a staged reading of letters by the writer James Boyd and his contemporaries (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe), giants of American literature. The letters were compiled by our good friend Stephen E. Smith and presented at Weymouth, the former estate of James Boyd. The Andante from Concerto in G is another lovely piece by Vivaldi. Originally written as a concerto for two mandolins, it adapts well to guitar and flute. Sogni d'oro (Golden Dreams) is a recent composition. I enjoyed using the guitar, flute and oboe combination on this work. The blues classic "House of the Rising Sun" has always had an appeal to me. Usually played slow and bluesy, I decided to jazz it up a bit. It was great fun to arrange and play. The classic, poignant Celtic melody known as the Derry Air and Americanized to Danny Boy stands alone here as a flute solo. Nothing is missing. The final piece on this recording, Evening Star, is a recomposed, rearranged and re-recorded version of an earlier composition by me. The original, Of Stars That Brightly Shine, was featured on one of our Christmas albums several years ago. This new rendition is more tranquil and sonorous. Danny Infantino summer, 2009