The Circus of Creation: Composer Gwyneth Walker’s Tribute to Robert Lax’s Circus of the Sun

Marcia Kelly, Robert Lax’s niece and literary executor, told me an interesting story recently.  A few years ago, she and her husband Jack (who live in NY) received a message from a composer named Gwyneth Walker, telling them the composition she had written based on Lax’s Circus of the Sun would be performed in Sarasota, FL, in five days.  She had forgotten to let them know…but they happened to be in Florida and had plans to be in Sarasota that weekend already.  When they went to the concert, who should walk in but several members of the Cristiani family who lived nearby!  (Sarasota has long been the winter home for many circus people.)

The concert was fabulous, Marcia says, with a local celebrity dressed as a master of ceremonies reading the spoken parts and a sold-out crowd.

For more about the concert, including a review, Walker’s thoughts on her composition (called “The Circus of Creation”) and PDFs of both the orchestration and the spoken parts, go to Walker’s website.