Circus March starts with a brief fanfare grandly announcing that the circus has come to town. The parade enters the tent with the performers waving proudly to the crowd. We see a calliope being pulled by strutting horses, acrobats tumbling, horses prancing, lions and tigers roaring, graceful dancers, and capering clowns.

This work is reminiscent of an old silent movie’s live accompaniment to the onscreen antics of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. In fact, the working title was initially Musical Melodrama but as the piece took shape, the different moods of the music keep calling to mind visions of the sparkle of a circus and its many different groups of performers so I changed the title to Circus March.