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 and listen to a recording for 6 instruments.

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 performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for concert wind ensemble

ca. 9'28"

Chiaroscuro was commissioned by Dr. Brian Kaufman, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Wind Ensemble in 2016. The term 'chiaroscuro' is a term used in painting to refer to the dramatic treatment of light and shade. I exploit the many colors of wind, brass, percussion and piano to contrast and blend with each other. The piano in particular adds a brilliant coloristic component. The piece is highly rhythmic and builds to a rollicking climax where the full power of the brass section holds sway. The surprise ending is gentle, highlighting the upper winds.

The piece is recorded on Albany Records entitled Filtering, published in 2020.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for flute, cello, and percussion

Marguerite’s Dance - Infusion Ensemble - was written while I was in residence at the American Dance Festival with the Composers Choreographer’s Workshop at Duke University led by Earle Browne in 1981. The EAR Unit premiered the work and has performed it several times since then as well as performances at The Barge in Brooklyn and at the California Institute of the Arts. Spiky melodies emphasizing major 7ths are passed between the instruments in a 3-part slow-fast-slow succession. I am indebted to Erike Duke Fitzgerald, Dorothy Stone and Dan Kennedy for their collaboration on this piece.

Click here to view the score.

Anna Rubin

for solo percussion and fixed media

Taming the Beast is a work for solo percussionist and fixed media. The percussionist is surrounded by a battery of metallic instruments ranging from the triangle to large gongs and tam-tams. In the course of the piece, the percussionist emerges from this ‘cage’ and ends playing the magical ‘stroke rods,’ long aluminum rods which are stroked to produce high ringing tones. The work in is in 3 large sections the first of which features Buddhist chant in the fixed media portion which has been modified and altered electronically. Metallic sounds dominate the middle section while a wide-spectrum synthesized rainbow of sound dominates the ending. The soloist has semi-improvisational sections throughout the work along with strickly somposed sections. The piece has been featured in concerts in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Belgium with performers including Jim Pugliese, Jeff Kershner, Paul Koek, and Max Van Der Beek.

Click here to view the score.

Anna Rubin

for soprano and percussion

ca. 15'00"

Ice Song (1993) is scored for soprano or mezzo and percussion (vibraphone and several small drums, rattles, and metal instruments). I created the text after reading a haunting Inuit story describing one Inuit community’s struggle for food in the dead of winter. The song is sung as the story of one woman’s terrible dilemma as she gives birth while the hunters of the village are away trying to get food for their starving families. The vocal line is melismatic; the musical language atonal and the percussion used for timbral variety and intensification. Isabelle Ganz premiered the work at MusicAlaskaMusic Conference in Fairbanks in 1993; it was most recently performed in Germany in 2005 by contralto Wiebke Hoogklimmer.

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