Linda Dusman

for C flute, A clarinet, violin, cello, piano, large tam-tam, medium triangle (very resonant), crotales, Almglocken (B5 only), and 5-octave marimba

ca. 11'00"

This piece is dedicated to the Ruckus Ensemble and to Rahilia Hasanova, an extraordinary composer and friend. The recording heard when viewing the score was from an October 2024 LiveWire Festival performance by the Ruckus Ensemble at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The performers were Lisa Cella (flute), Natalie Groom (clarinet), Airi Yoshioka (violin), Gita Ladd (cello), Teodora Adzharova (piano), and Dustin Donahue (percussion).

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman

for video

ca. 9'00"

Dream Prayer Observatory is a collaborative work between a photographer, a composer, and an audio engineer. Dan Bailey’s Observatories series renders photographs with an expanded sense of time. It attempts to slow down to observe, reflect, and record landscapes – a rhythm that is more on a geologic time scale. The images presented in Dream Prayer Observatory are from one camera view on the southern coast of Tasmania taken over a period of 3 months. 

Responding to a request from violinist Airi Yoshioka for a new solo work, composer Linda Dusman integrated world lullabies into iconic music from the Western canon as a reflection on the plight of migrating children. The resulting Dream Prayer Lullaby unfolds as a dream of a peaceful integration of peoples as they are forced from one land to another, a prayer that this dream might be realized, and a lullaby to comfort the children who suffer and wait. 

Alan Wonneberger recorded and spatialized Airi Yoshioka’s performance of Dream Prayer Lullaby as the audio component of Dream Prayer Observatory. Convolution reverb places the violin in the Great Pyramid, while the audio slowly “migrates” in stereo space.

Click here to watch the video.

Linda Dusman

for piano trio

ca. 10'00"

Dancing Universe, composed in honor of my parents who both passed away in 2015, quotes fragments of their favorite hymns in memoria. While composing, I was also reflecting on T.S. Eliot’s monumental poem Four Quartets, especially these passages:

“And the bird called in response to the unheard music hidden in the shrubbery…I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope…But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting…So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

The recording heard when viewing the score was performed by the Trio des Alpes (Hana Kotková, violin, Claude Hauri, cello, and Corrado Greco, piano).

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman

for orchestra

ca. 11'15"

What Remains constitutes the second piece in a series of works embodying the concept of pis aller—“paths of last resort,” for me a fitting metaphor for our time of great immigrations, political extremes, and sudden local disruptive violence. What Remains explores specifically the human trait of obsession that often drives individuals to this final recourse, and that path’s potential for leading toward both great good and great evil.

What remains at its end? The air we breathe, the lives that air enables, our shared potential for good, and the possibility of an arrival at that end, rather than its opposite. What Remains stands as a reminder of humanity’s collective responsibility to walk a path away from obsessive violence and ugliness toward intentional peace and beauty.

A recording was made by the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jed Gaylin. 

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman

for solo violin

ca. 9'00"

When violinist Airi Yoshioka asked me to compose a new solo violin work for her, I began to study the Paganini Caprices, monumental violin works that explore many nuances of expressive possibilities on the instrument. At the same time, my heart was breaking at the news of the worldwide immigrant crisis, especially for Syrian refugees, and especially for the children. Listening to an Arabic lullaby, I discovered it used a similar mode to the 6th Paganini Caprice. Combining the two as a metaphor for peaceful and fruitful uniting of cultures became the gestalt of the work. 

As I worked to finish the piece in the spring and summer of 2018, the United States government was separating children from their families at the southern US border. I decided to fold in another lullaby, this time from the Andes. The focus of Dream Prayer Lullaby ultimately became three-fold: a dream of a peaceful integration of peoples as they are forced from one land to another, a prayer that this dream might be realized, and a lullaby to comfort the children who suffer and wait. 

I want to thank the peoples of Arabia, the Andes, and Nigeria whose lullabies are quoted in this piece, and whose music inspired my work.

Violinist Airi Yoshioka premiered this piece in 2018 in Piacenza, Italy, and a recording of her subsequent performance is available on opening the score.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman 

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, double dass, harp, percussion, and piano

ca. 11'00"

What must our Lady Liberty be thinking? Staunchly guarding the NewYork harbor, sending a beacon of light still, but now a museum, what are her sonic memories of mothers singing to comfort their children? Mother of Exiles, your huddled masses are now at our southern borders, where there is a wall instead of a beacon of hope. How do we create a more perfect union, when we are faced so dramatically with the imperfections of our past and our present? What would that union sound like?

I want to express my appreciation to the cultures that created the lullabies quoted in this work: Syria, Nigeria, and the Andes region. My hope is that our shared concerns of caring for the young might bring these disparate voices together to forge a sustainable future. Any royalties resulting from performances of this work will be donated to Unicef, the United Nations agency for children.

The performance was recorded by the Inscape Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Richard Scerbo.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman

for soprano and violin

ca. 14'45"

Fifteen years ago, mixed in among mundane official forms and memos, I received in my campus mailbox Serena Hilsinger’s Triptych of Gossips. I recall that it was a “weak day of bad month,” and so this gesture of artistry was a great gift, a poem I have turned to many times since for inspiration. With the opportunity to compose a piece for the Chiu/LaBarbara Duo (who premiered the piece in 2010) I returned to it to explore its musical possibilities. After considering a number of different directions, I embarked on a path creating an homage to the 1970’s—combining the exuberance of second wave feminism with the playfulness and enthusiasm with which composers of that era explored the expressive potentials of extended techniques for instruments and voices. The piece is dedicated to Serena Hilsinger and Lois Brynes, great friends who never cease to inspire.

This piece was performed and recorded in 2018 by Duo della Luna (Susan Botti, soprano, and Airi Yoshioka, violin).

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Click here to watch the performance video (YouTube).

Linda Dusman

for violin, cello, and piano

ca. 11'45"

This piece is dedicated to Trio des Alpes.

Thundersnow explores the concept of transformation and the union of opposites. Coarse, rock-like fragments twist in counterpoint, melting into metallic surfaces that eventually take flight. 

A recording of this piece was made by Trio des Alpes.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman

for contralto and violin

ca. 14'45"

Fifteen years ago, mixed in among mundane official forms and memos, I received in my campus mailbox Serena Hilsinger’s Triptych of Gossips. I recall that it was a “weak day of bad month,” and so this gesture of artistry was a great gift, a poem I have turned to many times since for inspiration. With the opportunity to compose a piece for the Chiu/LaBarbara Duo (who premiered the piece in 2010) I returned to it to explore its musical possibilities. After considering a number of different directions, I embarked on a path creating an homage to the 1970’s—combining the exuberance of second wave feminism with the playfulness and enthusiasm with which composers of that era explored the expressive potentials of extended techniques for instruments and voices. The piece is dedicated to Serena Hilsinger and Lois Brynes, great friends who never cease to inspire.

Click here to view the score.

Linda Dusman

for violin and electronics

ca. 11'30"

My music in recent years comprises a weaving together of disparate elements. Commissioned by Airi Yoshioka as a work for violin and electronics, I began contemplating magnificat 3 during the US occupation of Iraq, and began composing it as the 17-year cicadas emerged during the spring of 2004, with final revisions in 2005. This composition is the third in a series of works that began as a reflection on the Virgin Mary’s text: “My soul doth magnify the lord,” but which were interrupted by world events beginning with September 1, 2001. I realized that “magnificat 3” was a lament late one night when I was working on the piece and my 8-year-old son woke screaming from a nightmare in which “the war in Iraq came here.” Afterward I realized how much world events had been weighing on me as well. I imagined how much worse, and more frequent, must be the nightmares of the children in Iraq, whose parents cannot shelter them from the constant violence there. magnificat 3 in the end is a lament for all children who are victims of violence.

This recording of this piece is by Airi Yoshioka.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Linda Dusman

for violin, violoncello, and piano

ca. 13'00"

Diverging Flints was inspired by an Emily Dickenson poem (from which the title is a quote), in which the poet uses the spark created by struck flint as a metaphor for human interaction. In the interactions among the trio members and in its harmonic and rhythmic development, my composition celebrates the chance meeting, and its potential power to change forever the individuals involved.

The recording of this piece is by the Damocles Trio (Adam Kent, piano; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Sibylle Johner, cello) and can be heard when viewing the score. It was recorded at the Livewire Festival in 2010.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Click here to watch a performance (YouTube).