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.

The recording heard when viewing the score was recorded by the John Hopkins Symphony conducted by Jay Gaylin. 

Click here to view the score.

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 is available on opening the score, performed by New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, with William Drury, Director.

Click here to view the score.

Sofia Kamayianni

for youth symphony orchestra

ca. 3'00"

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.

Click here to view a performance (YouTube).

Sofia Kamayianni

for 3 trumpets, trombone, and percussion

ca. 8'30"

"The Steelworkers" was composed in the Autumn of 2012 and was inspired by the nine-month long Greek steelworkers strike that was then underway. This was a historical strike which will be remembered, among other reasons, for taking place at such a unique moment, in Greece being forced to enter the memorandum of understanding that bring extreme and inhuman measures into a society that was in a state of shock. In the work I tried to express my feelings and thoughts arising from this major conflict, the individual issues and fluctuations which were to remain with us for such a long time, and the images in my mind of the workers inside the factory. The steelworkers fought throughout all these months with incomparable strength, resistance, self-denial, collectivity and solidarity - with huge costs to their own lives that were to become evident for those who continued to followed the story in the years that followed.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the piece (YouTube).

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, 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 trumpet and orchestra

ca. 16'00"

Composing Odyssey was akin to starting an exciting adventure, a (life-affirming) voyage. The decision to call the trumpet concerto Odyssey came in part from my own inner odyssey in composing this piece, and also ideas which arose while reading about Nikos Kazantzakis' epic poem, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Kazantzakis believes that man must structure his life and work on the "dark Abyss". Life has meaning only when it accepts and rises above the great negation of the Abyss. The two conflicting currents,seeking a synthesis, lead to creative play and affirmation of life.

1. Turning Point: A concerto is a great vehicle for metaphor, a tale with dialogues between our trumpet protagonist and the different sections of the orchestra. The prominent ascending fifths of the trumpet theme and its subsequent development createa broad and expansive mood. In the following movements the interval of the fifth or its inversion continues to be an important element of the trumpet solo.2. Dancing on the Abyss The middle movement has a perilous and risk defying dance for the trumpet. The opening theme for the contrabassoon, accompanied by an octave-leaping motif in the bassoon and double bass creates a stark, quirky nervous energy.3. Shifting CurrentsAn undulating pattern in the low strings ushers in the haunting blues-influenced trumpet theme accompanied by the shifting moods and rhythms of the orchestra.The concerto was commissioned by the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra for the premiere performance by Charles Schlueter.

Click here to view the score.

Ruth Lomon

for brass quartet (two trumpets, trombone, bass trombone)

Composed to exorcise the magpies pecking the metal strips on the roof of my cottage at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos.

Click here to view the score.

Ruth Lomon

for brass quartet (two trumpets in C, trombone, bass trombone)

Commissioned by Francis J. Cooke, Director of Music, Lexington Unitarian Church to accompany the first performance of the Requiem choruses.

Click here to view the score.

Eleanor Hovda

for chamber orchestra

ca. 13'45"

This piece was commissioned by the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the recording by the Prism Players on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD. (Spotify)

Lois V Vierk

for orchestra

This piece was inspired by the twisted sandstone canyon in the southern California high desert in Angeles National Park called "Devil's Punchbowl". At this exquisite site you are always aware of both extreme beauty and also danger. Descending into the canyon the trail is rugged, rocky, and treacherous, and the head is scorching. But rising up from the deep gorge are steep, magnificent mountains with their cold streams and sweet smelling pine trees. The vistas are grand. Far in the distance, soft shapes and hues of the landscape melt into one another. 

Devil's Punchbowl unfolds slowly. Musical materials are constantly developed, pushing the work forward from a relatively simple beginning to its dynamic and colorful climax. The piece opens with languorous brass slides downward. String phrases answer the brass, and woodwinds add color and wisps of melody. Gradually the strings begin their long ascending glissando, sweeping the woodwinds up to their highest register, ending the first section.

Immediately strings and low woodwinds enter with agitated multi-color, ever-changing trills and tremolos. Various instruments combine to form sinewy melodic shapes which creep slowly upward. Percussion becomes more pronounced. Brass adds rhythm and harmony. Each phrase builds on the one before as, little by little, the music becomes faster, louder, and rhythmically emphatic. Trombones and celli playing fortissimo glissandi in the lowest register propel the piece to its full orchestral climax. After the high energy of the climax the music returns briefly to the lyrical mood of the opening, ending gently. 

Devil's Punchbowl was commissioned by the Bang On A Can Festival and the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. The commissioning of this work was made possible by a grant fro the Meet The Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. 

The recording of Devil's Punchbowl is of the premiere, given by Victoria Bond conducting the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra on March 21, 1994. They performed the piece beautifully. 

Below are two versions of the score. First is the final version, incorporating several sets of edits to the orchestration made after the premiere and over subsequent years, and which is dated 2009. The major changes to orchestration, emphasizing an expanded role for trombones, etc., are marked above the staves of the score. 

The second is the original score as used by Victoria Bond in 1994 (with numerous indications marked for my first set of edits).

Click here to view the revised score.

Click here to view the original score.

Lois V Vierk

for trumpet, cello, electric guitar, percussion, and piano/synthesizer

The title of this piece refers to the way in which astronomers and physicists measure movement and distances of distant celestial bodies. Briefly, characteristic lines and patterns made by different elements found in the star, etc., as observed through a spectrometer, are shifted in one direction or the other, towards the red or towards the blue end of the spectrum, depending on whether the body is moving away from us or towards us. This shift is called the "red shift".

When I wrote this work, I had the feeling of something of great mass and motion, far away, like a comet. It first seemed to move slowly, then gradually began accelerating toward us, faster, and faster, until finally at great speed I felt it sweeping down upon us, through us, and back out into the heavens.

During the 1980s and into the '90s I worked on developing principles of "Exponential Structure", in which elements such as time, harmonic motion, rhythmic and timbral development, sound density, etc. are controlled mathematically by exponential factors. These are not meant to be abstract constructs, but formal ideas based on the emotional thrust of the sounds and of the piece as a whole. The harmonic motion (movement from one pitch center to another), with its ever-decreasing time segments, is the clearest expression of Exponential Structure in this work. 

The original 1989 version of Red Shift (cello, electric guitar, percussion, synthesizer) was commissioned by the Experimental Intermedia Foundation with support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and is available on CD from Tzadik Records. In 1991 the piece was reorchestrated as Red Shift 4 for A Cloud Nine Consort and again for Ensemble Modern.

This recording does not totally match the score.  The recording is of a 1991 orchestration of this piece for the New York ensemble A Cloud Nine Consort, without cello.  Performers are:

Gary Trosclair, trumpet/synthesizer

Mark Stewart, electric guitar

Alan Moverman, synthesizer/piano

Tigger Benford, percussion

from CD:

New World Records NWCR646 "Bang On A Can Live, Vol. 2,  Emergency Music"

Click here to view the CD on New World Records.

Click here to view the score.

Lois V Vierk

for 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, and 2 bass trombones

This 22-minute work unfolds slowly, and it gradually builds in intensity to a dynamic and expansive lcimax. At first, languid descending glissandi flow acress the space from choir to choir. Little by little the materials develop, pitch relationships become more complex and faster moving, the work becomes rhythmic, glissandi get fster and change direction, the register expands. At its climax the piece settles into arpeggios acress the range of the instruments, against fortissimo chords and bass trombone pedal tones.

Jagged Mesa was premiered in 1990 at St Mark's Church in the Bowery, on New York City's lower East Side, with a mdern dance choreographed by Risa Jaroslow. St. Mark's Church is a big, cavernous space, with balcony around the top, and a beautiful modern dance floor below. There is a long reverberation time in the church. The piece was composed with this in mind. Brass players were in the balcony--3 players on each side--and the composer conducted from below, on the same level as the dancers. Sounds in the piece are written to overlap. The slowly-moving tones and glissandi blend and resonate in the space.

Recording is by: 

Gary Trosclair, trumpet

Bruce Eidem, trombone

Christopher Banks, bass trombone

from CD:

Tzadik 7056 "Lois V Vierk: River Beneath the River"

Click here to view the CD on Tzadik.

Click here to view the score.

Lois V Vierk

for six trumpets

Cirrus (1988) is a work for virtuoso trumpet players. It unfolds slowly and is directional and developmental. The work begins on one pitch in the trumpet's middle register, a held tone with crescendo and decrescendo. Very soon a punctuating 16th note is added at the top of the crescendo, and soon after that a slow glissando (played with the trumpet slide) is added to the phrase. These are the materials that are developed for the rest of the piece. Pitches are added to the phrase. The register expands as does the dynamic range. The 16th note figure is developed, first alternating between two pitches at a time and creating rhythmical phrases, and eventually becoming scalar passages. These passages get longer and longer, eventually moving up to the high register of the instrument, at the loudest and most articulated and fastest moving part of the piece, the climactic section. Then the scalar passages reverse their direction, coming down to the lowest register, where the glissando material has become faster, alternating back and forth between two tones. The scalar passages become shorter, dying out as the glissando again slows down. The work ends lyrically, reminding me of graceful cirrus clouds.

This is one of my pieces for ensembles of like-instruments from the 1980's. Some of my other works from this time are for 5 electric guitars, 18 trombones, 8 cellos, and 4 accordions. I consider each of these ensembles to be one "big instrument". In all of these pieces I used principles of what I call "exponential structure", in which elements such as time, harmonic motion, rhythmic and timbral development, sound density, etc. are controlled by exponential factors. These are not abstract constructs, but formal ideas based on the emotional thrust of the sounds and of the piece as a whole.

Recording is by Gary Trosclair, trumpet, from CD:

XI Records, XI 102 "Lois V Vierk: Simoom"