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.

Annea Lockwood

for amplified marimba, two tam-tams, and crystal bowl gong (in F)

ca. 11'15"

Immersion, for marimba and two tam-tams was written for  Dominic Donato and Frank Cassara and arranged for the Talujon Percussion Quartet in 2001.  It grew out of a fascination with the rich beating frequencies generated by long cluster rolls in the low register of the marimba and the interaction between the marimba and a quartz bowl gong tuned to F.

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

Click here to view the performance notes.

Click here to listen on Annea Lockwood's website.

Ruth Lomon

for mezzo soprano, piano, and percussion

ca. 15'15"

"Combustion ..." is fiery with a story accompaniment. "Dream Polyps…" is gentle, spectral, and dissolves into the first Choros. This divertissement has some humorous effects between the vocalise of the singer and the antics of a slide whistle. The heightened excitement generated by the second quotation intersects the more introspective mood of the next two verses.

"Golden eyebrow auras…" is accompanied by a fragment of Bach's Easter Cantata and closes into the second Choros which is reminiscent of the opening preamble, and features a play between a strummed C major chord inside the piano and a  D major chord played on a mouth organ. The last declamatory interjection builds from a simple two-note ostinato into a majestic close.

The last two verses are closest in mood, having a quiet modal quality in the voice, accompanied by plucked strings and inside-the-piano strummed chords. Symbiosis is dedicated to Eileen Davis and Rosemary Platt.

 The performers in the recording are Eileen Davis, mezzo soprano, and Rosemary Platt, piano, and both performers also play percussion instruments.

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

Ruth Lomon

for bass clarinet, harp, vibraphone/marimba, harpsichord, and piano

ca. 14'45"

Iatiku was composed in New Mexico during the summer of 1983. The word "iatiku" means "bringing to life" in the dialect of the Acoma Indians. It is also the name given to CHANGING WOMAN, the god personifying the earth and the changing seasons. Iatiku is composed for bass clarinet, marimba, vibraphone, harp, harpsichord, and piano, a blend of instruments which fascinates me. The composition opens with the indication ''Mysterious.'' The timbres produced by the unusual combination of instruments heightens the quality of mystery. You will hear the bass clarinet, harp, and vibraphone in passages of bent tones. These tones have quarter tone fluctuations which color the notes dramatically. There are "inside the piano" passages, thrumming sounds produced with a mallet on the lower strings, some banshee, eerie sounds, plucked and strummed strings which interplay with the harp. The listener may note a section called "the elements" which starts with the mounting tension of a catastrophic storm, and leads to a tightly-organized rhythmic accelerando. In the closing section of the piece there is a duet between bass clarinet and vibraphone called "rituals'' inspired by an Indian ritual dance, which has an intricate rhythmic pattern coupled with a melodic recurrence of the tritone.

Iatiku was the MMTA Commissioned work for 1983-84. (Massachusetts Music Teachers Association, affiliated with the Music Teachers National Association, Inc.) Commissioning funds were made possible in part by a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. (Meet the Composer Grant)

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

Ruth Lomon

for oboe, marimba, and optional bowed chime

ca. 13'00"

Desiderata was commissioned for the 1984 Canadian Contemporary Music Festival, a part of the Ontario bicentennial celebrations. Desiderata was composed for Patricia Morehead (oboe) and Beverly Johnston (marimba). The piece may be performed as a duo for oboe and marimba, or as a trio with an optional third part for bowed chime or double bass. The Canadian premiere in May, 1984 was performed as a trio with the composer playing the bowed chime.

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

Ruth Lomon

for clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, vibraphone/tomtoms, and piano

Weaving(s):

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. "He hath walked the whole labyrinth and mizmaze of his life." (Beza) Warp and Weft has two textures running through this 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 some songs of the

Navajo. Penelope's Web is a proverbial expression for anything which is perpetually doing and never done. While Ulysses was off fighting the wars Penelope wove her tapestry every day and undid the work every evening to keep her suitors at bay. She held off their proposals by saying that she would not make a commitment to any of them until she had finished weaving the funereal robe for Laertes, her father-in-law.

The myth gave me a frame for the changing textures of this movement, building a thick texture with the four instruments, and thinning to long solo passages with tremolo chordal treatments in the vibraphone and piano solos.

Click here to view the score.

Ruth Lomon

for piano and percussion

Imprints returns to Ms. Lomon's interest in Native American Ceremonials. As a participant in a peyote ceremony she was inspired by the vocal extemporizing of each participant, the intensity of declamation and rhythms of gourd and water drums accompanying each singer. The ceremony acted as a catalyst for the areas of feeling she wished to express. The declamatory role of the piano in "House of Storms" is an aspect of this, as are the propelling percussion rhythms. "Song to Pull Down the Clouds" opens with a prayer addressed to the thunderbird of pollen and carried into the wind-swollen sky. Ruth Lomon, composer and resident scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, has created a body of work which reflects her long-standing love of the Southwest.

Click here to view the score.

Ruth Lomon

for harpsichord and vibraphone

ca. 3'45"

Dialogue for Harpsichord and Vibraphone features the contrasting timbres of harpsichord and vibraphone: the light, clear brilliance of the harpsichord juxtaposed with the sustained undulating sonorities of the vibraphone. The rapid interplay of motifs is built on a modulating tempo which heightens the energy of the piece.

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

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 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.

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.

Patricia Ann Repar

for five performers, body percussion, junk metal, tape

Darkness–thin air–tight spaces–twelve-hour shifts–Day in day out.

Working in the gold mines of South Africa black labourers developed a body percussion sequence, the Gumboot, as a way of surviving the intense physical and emotional stresses imposed upon them. Musically demanding and highly entertaining, this piece is now internationally known and appreciated.

The Unseen Gumboot, however, reminds us of that which we would probably rather not remember--the context in which the piece was born--the harsh realities of Apartheid and our own potential (yours and mine) for creating horrific moments in human history.

Click here to view the score.

Patricia Ann Repar

video documentary

ca. 48'10"

Ripples: Artists In Collaboration is a 50-minute film highlighting the collaborative approaches developed by the following artists: visual artists Barbara Kendrick and Sara Krepp; composer Carla Scaletti and computer scientist Alan Craig; composer/percussionist Michael Udow and choreographer/dancer Nancy Udow; and bass-baritone Philip Larson and trumpeter Edwin Harkins.

Click here to view the film Ripples: Artists in Collaboration

Patricia Ann Repar

for flute, oboe, B-flat clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, violoncello, ocean drum, and voice

ca. 14'00"

There is the blue we feel

in the presence of human suffering and separateness

[stylish, solo voices, self-important melodies interrupting, competing]

And there is the blue we see from above

peaceful, swirling speck of beauty on the soul of our universe

[gentle voices reminding, connecting us to life before and beyond]

There are those who carry us from the one blue to the other.

I have written this piece in honor of them–

it is time to share in and realize their Vision of Blue

Click here to view the score.

Patricia Ann Repar

for two snare drums

ca. 6'14"

Click here to view the score.

Click here to view a performance (YouTube).

Patricia Ann Repar

for flute, violin, cello, percussion, and piano

ca. 9'15"

"In the pampas, down a tree lined lane, live three people who once saw the names of loved ones and strangers burned out life, yet they keep those names alive in memory. They give the names of those who vanished to birds so that the sky above their estancia is always alive with flying names."

--Lawrence Thornton

Imagination, memory, and breathing, all tend to be illusive in our lives–that is–until a moment of crisis when they become more real than all the Wheels of Fortune spinning us round about in our oh-so-busy lives. In Imagining Argentina Lawrence Thornton describes one of those critical moments and how the power of memory, imagination, and human breath, recreated and transformed it–ultimately dismembering the military dictatorship of Argentina. The performers and myself offer this piece in honor of Thornton–in honor of those many Argentinians who adamantly and courageously refuse to forget their own dreams and desires for beauty–in honor of you, may you hear the birdsong, remember the names, and re-imagine the moments of your lives.

Click here to view the score.