Edgard Varése in The Gobi Desert by Paul Elwood performed by Iowa Percussion

Edgard Varèse in the Gobi Desert was composed in 1983 and revised in 1999. Composer Paul Elwood writes, “In the summer of 1982, the always-inventive Kansas musician Kelly Werts glued and nailed Velcro strips to the soles of a pair of two-tone thrift-store shoes and began doing dance steps on indoor-outdoor carpet samples. Such was the birth of ’Velcro tap-dancing’ or ’negative tap-dancing’“ that Elwood describes as “the only viable form of tap dancing in the weightlessness of outer space.“ Composed for Wert