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 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 wind ensemble

ca. 7'15"

Solstice was commissioned by the Hanover, Pennsylvania Southwestern High School Symphonic Band, Carey Crumling, director, in 1997. The title refers to my inspiration for the piece, which I found in the often turbulent weather changes that characterize the change from season to season. As a larger metaphor this reflects the emotional turbulence that characterizes the change from childhood to adulthood, which I expressed in the often bi-tonal language of the piece.

A recording of the piece was performed by New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, with William Drury, Director.

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, flute, cello, piano, percussion

ca. 7'30"

Elio: Visions of Light is a setting of fragments of poetry by the Greek lyric poet Sappho for soprano, flute, cello, piano, and percussion. It reflects my memories of the light in Greece during my travels there.

A recording of this piece was made by Ana Spasic, soprano, and members of the Conservatorio "G. Nicolini" chamber music program in Piacenza, Italy.

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

Sofia Kamayianni

for youth symphony orchestra

ca. 2'50"

This piece was premiered in 2015 by the UMBC Symphony under the direction of E. Michael Richards, and the video recording is linked below.

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

Click here to view the performance.

Sofia Kamayianni

for actress, flute, cello, video, and tape

Click here to view the score.

Sofia Kamayianni

for flute, clarinet, percussion, and electronics

ca. 11'27"

This piece has a narrative character obviously connected with time as all the stories. I cannot not specify the story that it tells, as it was more or less abstract in my mind during the composition of the piece. However, the path after some time revealed itself and became clear. The live instruments are always in a dialogue with the tape. It was part of the project “3x3 Contemporary Music from Greece and the USA”.

Clepsydra is the Greek word for hourglass.

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

Sofia Kamayianni

for flute, clarinet, cello, piano, and percussion

Written for amateur players, or players unaccustomed to contemporary music

Click here to view the score.

Annea Lockwood

for six players; two bowed strings, two winds/brass, two percussion (include MIDI if possible), and any other instruments desired, amplification

Monkey Trips is based upon the Tibetan Buddhist metaphor of the six states/realms of being which we constantly recreate and assume to be reality, six “different kinds of projections or dream worlds” (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche). Each realm is associated with a particular instrument and the piece moves through them successively.

The Heaven Realm (violin), realm of serenity and stasis in which the monkey dwells on her achievements, blocking out everything undesirable; the intrusion of another player draws her out of this solipsistic state and into dialogue.

The Realm of the Jealous Gods (percussion) in which fear of losing the bliss of the first state evokes a need to defend it, and a need to control and compete, but the competitive “other” is no other, it is oneself.

In the Human Realm (cello), realm of passion and intellect, the monkey becomes discriminating – exploring, comparing, reaching out to possess the pleasurable, but discovering that pleasure slips away and craving creates frustrations.  However, the idea of unity emerges.

Those frustrations impel a retreat into the Animal Realm (bass clarinet), away from intensity into the habitual, rooting around in a more limited world, clinging stubbornly to the safely familiar, whether painful or comfortable.

Then a desperate feeling of starvation sets in, the Realm of the Hungry Spirits (flutes); visions of open space and of plenty turn into deprivation.  A thirsting for what monkey remembers she once had becomes insatiable.  Always reaching out but never realizing that in order to drink, you have to first open your throat.

The Hell Realm (percussion): a feeling of being trapped in a small space, of struggling to control this self-created imprisonment.  The more she struggles, the more solid grow the walls until rage is exhausted.  Then the monkey begins to let go, and suddenly sees that the walls are self-created, the realms are self-created.  She breaks through into open space.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to purchase the CD through Presto Music.

Annea Lockwood

for baritone voice, flute, trumpet, viola, cello, piano, percussion, and speaking voice

Luminescence was commissioned by Thomas Buckner, and is based on poems from Etel Adnan's SEA, which evoke the Lebanese coast of the Mediterranean, her birthplace. The Pacific Ocean is also a strong presence in her life as in Thomas Buckner's and mine, and so the piece celebrates our three-way friendship and our shared love of that ocean, which influenced the first song: here, the phrase lengths match the timing of long Pacific waves which I recorded in New Zealand, some years ago.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen on Annea Lockwood's website.

Ruth Lomon

for flute, TAB flute, B-flat clarinet, piano, violoncello, and vibraphone

1. Mizmaze

2. Warp and Weft

3. Navajo: Weaving the Yei

4. Penelope’s Web

Mizmaze is an intricate network of pathways enclosed by hedges or plantations. Warp and Weft has two textures running through the movement to create a musical ‘warp and weft’. The pizzicato of the cello throughout the movement is intertwined with the melodic lines of the other instruments. Navajo: Weaving the Yei refers to the Navajo rugs that have the figures of the Yei, Navajo deities, woven into the rugs. You will hear references to songs of the Navajo and some chants. Penelope’s Web is a proverbial expression for work which is ongoing but never completed. The myth gave me a frame for the changing textures of this movement, building a thick texture with all the instruments and thinning to long solo flute passages accompanied by vibraphone tremolo chords.

Click here to view the score.

Ruth Lomon

for flute, B-flat clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpets in C, trombone/bass trombone, solo soprano, and SATB chorus

Songs from a Requiem are inserts in the setting of a Requiem Mass which Ruth Lomon composed in 1977 and dedicated to the memory of her sister. The Mass proper is set for chorus (SATB) accompanied by trumpets and trombones. The songs, settings of poems she wrote between 1970 and 1972, are orchestrated for soprano, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, and bassoon. The version for soprano with piano accompaniment was written in 1982.

The premiere of the entire Requiem took place in Boston, February 22, 1997, performed by Choro Allegro under the direction of David Hodgkins.

Click here to view the score.

Ruth Lomon

for three flutes

ca. 10'45"

A sunny, pastoral work composed in 2000. It was originally written to accompany the installation of a sound sculpture of three buoys constructed of phragmite grasses. It works well in concert halls as a flute trio and also as a spatial piece.

Tributary may be accompanied by a video film ‘What Water Tells Me’ created by installation artist, Mary Oestereicher Hamill.

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

Ruth Lomon

for solo flute

Sweet Sixteen was composed for flutist Nina Assimakopulos’ project ‘Contemporary Works for Solo Flute by American Women Composers’ in 2003. The Music for this project is literature-based; musical sounds and ideas expressed through a solo instrument. Sweet Sixteen is based on a poem by Vera Weislitzova, a poem about her 16th birthday in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

The work is in two brief movements:

1. Behind the Wall

2. The Ball

The linked video recording was performed by Emily Hinz.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to view the performance.

Ruth Lomon

for woodwind quintet (flute, oboe, B-flat clarinet, horn in F, bassoon)

ca. 12'45"

Diptych was composed in 1983 while Ruth Lomon was a fellow at the MacDowell Art Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. It is a work for woodwind quintet in two distinctive movements which also share common structural elements. The first section is dominated by a melodic line which threads through the instruments. In both halves of the Diptych there are episodes composed of trios for flute, oboe and clarinet. In the first trio the clarinet melody develops over a motoric rhythmic element, whereas the trio of the second part closes the movement with a haunting and improvisatory ending. Diptych was composed for the Lyricum Ensemble (Massachusetts), and has been performed by numerous woodwind quintets including the Ars Nova (New York), Venti Da Camera (Bowling Green University OH), The Ariel Quintet (Boston MA), The Theophilus Quintet and New Mexico Woodwind Quintet (both of Albuquerque NM). In 1993 Diptych was a finalist for Symposium VII for New Woodwind Quintet Music at The University of Georgia and was performed by The Metro Wind Quintet of St. Louis, MO.

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

Jane Rigler

for two flutes, or solo flute and playback

ca. 4'15"

The ambiguity of the piece begins with the title. I wrote this piece with the Inuit women’s vocal games in mind, where two women face each other so closely that the mouth cavity of one is the resonator for the other. While using a frying pan or other such device to help resonate their vocalizations, each begin to breathe, sing and vocalize gestures into the other’s face. This spectacular game ends when the first person begins to laugh, she, then, becoming the loser of the game. This flute piece was written for two female flutists. When performed in public, the intention of this piece is that neither the audience, and perhaps neither the interpreters, really know who is playing or singing what, being that the timbres and tones match so well between the voices and flutes. The improvised sections evoke the game: who will play next? Who will have the last word? Although, in this game, there are no losers. Ideally, the flutists should also face each other and play the music memorized, but this is not required. Have fun. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the piece (SoundCloud).

Click here for Jane Rigler's website. 

Anna Rubin

5 instrument version for flute (piccolo), clarinet in Bb (bass clarinet), violin, cello, and piano

6 instrument version for flute (piccolo), clarinet in Bb (bass clarinet), violin, cello, piano, and percussion (vibraphone)

ca. 10'30"

Dreaming Fire, tasting Rain was originally written while I was working on my Ph.D at Princeton University. The Nash Ensemble of London premiered the work at Princeton. The 6 instrument version includes percussion and is intended for performance by the Ruckus Ensemble at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The images of fire and rain translated into a variety of musical textures – sometimes serene and sometimes jagged and thorny. In the opening, heterophonic or layered melodies surge and then subside. A middle section begins with the lonely sound of the piccolo against spiky cello pizzicati and then builds to a driving pulsed rhythm, intensified with percussion. The music then eases into a lyrical cello melody against a background of rolling piano chords and flute and violin countermelodies.

The 5 instrument version has been performed at Oberlin College Conservatory, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and the Heidelberg College Festival of Women.

The 6 instrument version of the piece premieres in 2024 at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording for 5 instruments.

Click here to view the score for 6 instruments.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for alto saxophone and harp

ca. 8'44"

Silk and Steel was commissioned in 2010 by the duo Pictures on Silence, comprised of Jacqueline Pollauf, harp and Noah Getz, alto saxophone. The opening section is very romantic, featuring melismatic alto sax melodies over intricate harp accompaniment. A more whimsical rhythmic section follows where figures are tossed back and forth between the instruments. This leads into more dramatic material emphasizing extreme ranges between the instruments and a rocking low figure in the harp. Eventually the piece makes its way back to a reprise of the opening material. While exploiting a variety of textures between the two instruments, I explore various quasi-tonal harmonic structures and scales, sliding from suggestions of whole tone collections to Middle Eastern and atonal scales.

Silk and Steel premiered Jan. 19, 2010 at the American University in Washington, DC (Jaqueline Pollauf, harp and Noah Getz, alto sax). It was also performed on at Catholic University in Washington, DC (Nov. 12, 2010), Lilypad, Boston (Apr. 19, 2011), and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Oct. 26, 2018).

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

 A version was composed for flute and piano in 2019, based on the original version written for alto saxophone and harp.

 Click here to view the score.

Silk and Steel for flute and harp (2022) evokes qualities of both the delicacy and power that the flute and harp can project. The piece is also a version of the original work for alto sax and harp.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for flute and percussion

ca. 9'07"

hag riding was originally composed for the Umbilicus Quartet, a percussion quartet. It is based on two poems by Lucille Clifton, the late and highly honored poet, who spent part of her career in Maryland. Her fierce art is captured with precision in these works. The poem “hag riding” celebrates a woman’s joyous power. The second poem, “auction street,” evokes the horror of slave auctions, the auction block and “thousands of fathers and mothers led in a coffle to the block.” Complex polyrhythms are a feature of the work. I am grateful to Tom Goldstein for his encouragement and pleasurable hours spent exploring the extensive resources of Umbilicus.

Umbilicus Percussion Quartet premiered the original version of the piece at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Livewire Festival 4, 2013, and played it at The Parlor (Baltimore), also in 2013 and again in 2018 at the Livewire Festival 9 at UMBC.

Click here to view the score for percussion and flute.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording that is for percussion only.

Click here to download all performnce materials.