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Composed for the accordion ensemble, Alphen Opus 1 in 2018, the Leiden Suite presents a series of musical portraits of Leiden, Netherlands, the composer's home. Designed to be easily accessible to both performers and audiences, the suite consists of five short movements, each portraying a characteristic experience of the city: Breestraat, a busy shopping district and home to the town hall dating back to 1350, is composed as an energetic scherzo whose figures of perpetual motion are continually interrupted by stately tonal clusters evoking the street's medieval origins. The Burcht, one of the oldest surviving castles in the Netherlands, welcomes visitors to view the city from high on its hilltop, inspiring the music of a lyrically reflective ballad. The ascending and descending tonal clusters depicting Hortus Botanicus, the oldest botanical gardens in the Netherlands, suggests the blossoming and wilting in the cycle of plant life; while an undulating barcarolle provides a musical impression of the rippling traffic along the city's Grachten (canals). The suite ends with another scherzo comically representing the interminable (and often exasperating) presence of Fietsen (bicycles) on Leiden's streets.John Franceschina, composer, has created scores for the National Shakespeare Company and the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, Baltimore's Center Stage, Washington's Ford's Theatre and the Arena Stage, the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, Florida Studio Theatre, Geva Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Papermill Playhouse, Music Theatre Works, and the Moscow Art Theatre, in addition to the Asolo State Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, where he acted as composer-in-residence from 1976 to 1993. His Fanfare for the Fiftieth was commissioned by Philippe Entremont for the fiftieth anniversary of the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra in 1985; his secular oratorio, Houtebeen, for male chorus, string orchestra and accordion ensemble, toured the Netherlands in 2014, and his opera, Scenes from the Jungle toured the Netherlands in 2019.
