Classical music fans know the sarabande as that stately Spanish dance Bach and Handel liked to slow down and make all tender and languorous. But American composer Keir GoGwilt has uncovered something far more radical lurking in its past. On his collaborative album *The Zarabanda Variations*, GoGwilt assembles a 10-piece ensemble that smashes free jazz against baroque strings and spoken-word poetry, all to excavate the dance's colonial Latin American roots before it got all respectable in 17th- and 18th-century Spain.

First listen? You'd be forgiven for thinking this has nothing to do with the classical sarabande. Instead of polite courtly steps, you get scrapes of atonal strings, clattering percussion, guttural vocalisations, and sharp whistles - a cacophony of tension that supposedly mirrors the passionate, whirling energy of the dance's original forms. Rather than a baroque fusion, GoGwilt's compositions embrace the sarabande's lesser-known historical references to produce something entirely new. It's not easy listening, but it is thrillingly original.