Prelude and Dragonfly Dance was the John Bishop Memorial commission for the 1992 Adelaide Festival of the Arts. It was composed especially for the Synergy Percussion Ensemble and Evelyn Glennie.

The Prelude is a trance-like reverie with fragmentary marimba dialogue and near-subliminal droning of Japanese temple bells. It is intended as a mind-clearing preparation for the rhythmic, delicately exuberant Dragonfly dance.

The principle applied here, as in several other of my works, is that unexpected alignments and associations may create fresh perceptions of the familiar.

Ross Edwards.