Anna Rubin

for solo piano

For the Love of Bees is a six-part suite. It was originally composed for Dr. Margaret Lucia in a solo piano version with four parts in 2010. I expanded the piece in 2019 at the request of the director of the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sandrine Erdely-Sayo as well as adding a spoken narrative in another version. The idea for the piece was generated by my growing awareness of honeybee hive die-offs because of Colony Collapse Disorder. As I learned more about this problem, including interviewing bee specialists at the US Department of Agriculture, I also learned more about bees’ social behavior, other bee species, and their critical role as pollinators.

For each section, I used some of the striking characteristics of bees as a 'natural' metaphor along with a particular pianistic technical challenge in the tradition of the etude. In turn, each section explores a particular compositional/harmonic issue. In various sections, I was also responding to the piano compositions of Debussy, Chopin, Bartok, Messaien, and the great Cuban jazz pianist, Chucho Valdés.

"Swarms" uses rapidly iterated clusters of 3-7 notes — a sort of ‘megatrill’ — in a variety of textures in a free atonal musical language. "Sting" is based on rapidly executed lines in step-wise motion contrasted with 'stinging' dyads and rapid ostinati; the perfect 4th is the core interval. “Honey Queen” is based on slow 6-9 note sustained chords with combinations of 2nds, 4ths, 7ths, all in a protracted sense of unresolved stasis. “Myth of the Assassin Bees” is a fast-pulsed and syncopated exploration of virtuosic cross-hand technique with jazz-influenced chords. “Solitary” is a romantic and lyrical exercise in chromatic quasi-tonal harmony. "Ode to Bees and Their Keepers" takes the symmetry of the hive as a metaphor for expanding and contracting figures. It begins at the center of the instrument. These figures expand outward, contract and move variously through the range of the keyboard until the entire range of the instrument is sounding. This last section incorporates echoes of earlier sections — the megatrills of "Swarms," lush chords of “Honey Queen” and “Solitary,” and cross-hand technique of “Myth of the Assassin Bees.”

This piece was premiered by Dr. Margaret Lucia in 2010 at both the University of Maryland Baltimore County and Heidelberg College. She has performed this at multiple conferences and festivals including the International Alliance for Women in Music Conference (Flagstaff, 2011); College Music Society Symposium, Cambridge (2013); Pennsylvania Women Composers Festival (2014); Conservatorio Teresa Berganza (part of their Semana Cultural, 2017); Conservatorio Adolfo Salazar, Madrid (2017); Conservatori Superior de Musica de les Illes Balears, Palma Majorca (2017); Universidad de Salamanca, Festival Internacional de Primavera (2017); Centro Cultural de Nicholás Samerón (2017); Sala Manuel De Falla, Conservatorio Real de Madrid (2019); Auditorio de Galicia - Santiago de Compostela (2017); and Wunderkammer - Villa Bernasconi, Cernobbio (2019). Sections of the piece have also been performed in Baltimore at the Baltimore Composers Forum (2018) by Bonghee Lee.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for narrator and piano

ca. 21'58"

For the Love of Bees is a six-part suite. It was originally composed for Dr. Margaret Lucia in a solo piano version with four parts in 2010. I expanded the piece in 2019 at the request of the director of the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sandrine Erdely-Sayo as well as adding a spoken narrative. The idea for the piece was generated by my growing awareness of honeybee hive die-offs because of Colony Collapse Disorder. As I learned more about this problem, including interviewing bee specialists at the US Department of Agriculture, I also learned more about bees’ social behavior, other bee species, and their critical role as pollinators.

For each section, I used some of the striking characteristics of bees as a 'natural' metaphor along with a particular pianistic technical challenge in the tradition of the etude. In turn, each section explores a particular compositional/harmonic issue. In various sections, I was also responding to the piano compositions of Debussy, Chopin, Bartok, Messaien, and the great Cuban jazz pianist, Chucho Valdés.

"Swarms" uses rapidly iterated clusters of 3-7 notes — a sort of ‘megatrill’ — in a variety of textures in a free atonal musical language. "Sting" is based on rapidly executed lines in step-wise motion contrasted with 'stinging' dyads and rapid ostinati; the perfect 4th is the core interval. “Honey Queen” is based on slow 6-9 note sustained chords with combinations of 2nds, 4ths, 7ths, all in a protracted sense of unresolved stasis. “Myth of the Assassin Bees” is a fast-pulsed and syncopated exploration of virtuosic cross-hand technique with jazz-influenced chords. “Solitary” is a romantic and lyrical exercise in chromatic quasi-tonal harmony.  "Ode to Bees and Their Keepers" takes the symmetry of the hive as a metaphor for expanding and contracting figures. It begins at the center of the instrument. These figures expand outward, contract and move variously through the range of the keyboard until the entire range of the instrument is sounding. This last section incorporates echoes of earlier sections — the megatrills of "Swarms," lush chords of “Honey Queen” and “Solitary," and cross-hand technique of “Myth of the Assassin Bees.”

This version of the piece premiered at the Piano on the Rocks Festival in 2019. Other performances of the complete suite have occurred at the University of the Andes (2020) and at the Richmond Library in Philadelphia under the sponsorship of Drexel University and the library, which has an active beehive. Sections of the piece have also been performed in Baltimore (Baltimore Composers Forum) and the Philadelphia Ethical Society.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for amplified cello and fixed media

ca. 10'54"

Beekeepers Caroline and Jeff Crooks are small-scale beekeepers in Maryland who graciously allowed me to record their stories about beekeeping – as well as their bees. Their recorded voices are blended with ambient and computer-generated sound and blended with live cello. This sonic ‘portrait’ takes the listener into the world of a backyard apiary, and is part of a series of pieces commissioned by cellist Madeleine Shapiro dealing with the environment. The cellist’s part is both lyrical and percussive, allowing the performer to explore a variety of textures and colors available on the instrument.

This piece has been performed at such venues as The Tank (NYC, 2011), Electroacousic Music Festival, Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (2013), SEAMUS Conference, Wesleyan University (2014), and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2018).

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording by Michal Schmidt.

Click here to download performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for accordion/bayan

ca. 5'15"

Celia’s Samovar was written for the accordionist/bayan player, Stas Venglevski, in 2012. I was inspired by a relative’s beautiful silver samovar, which her family had brought to the US in the early 1900s when they emigrated from Russia. Her vivid stories of the dangerous journey her family undertook will always remain with me. The piece is a kind of fantasy incorporating several extended techniques for the player which Mr. Venglevski demonstrated to me. There are quasi improvisational sections as well.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

 for solo piano

ca. 2'00"

This short piece is part of the ‘Diabelli Recomposed’ project conceived by Claudia Bigos. Fifty worldwide composers participated in composing variations on the famous tune made famous by Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Furore Verlag (Germany) has published this piece in “Diabelli Recomposed,” Edition 10413.

Ludwig Dreams of Igor is a whimsical smash-up of well-known fragments of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps with the opening tune of the Diabelli Variations. The famous bi-tonalism of Le Sacre pervades the variation while melodic fragments of each composer are intertwined. The shared love of bombast cements their true brotherhood.

The piece premiered as part of a grand performance of all fifty pieces at the Hanover Music Academy in 2023.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to watch a performance (YouTube; go to 2:12:23).

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for soprano recorder, alto recorder, tenor recorder, ankle bells, and tambourines

ca. 5'45"

Banish Gloom! was commissioned by virtuoso recorder player Maria Loos. The piece requires the player to move around the stage and employ contemporary extended or unusual techniques of sound production. Ms. Loos was generous with her time and gave me many wonderful ideas. The piece begins in a melancholy mood and gradually becomes wilder and more joyous.

Banish Gloom! premiered at the Festival of Women Composers, Indiana University of PA, in 2008.

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

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.

Patricia Ann Repar

solo trombone and fixed media

ca. 14'00"

"The main misconception about the bones, then, is that they are made up of dead tissue."

-- Dr. D.R. Johnson, Centre for Human Biology

Jawbone chatters away, singin' the blues of ocean and rock,

skeletal bits of earth

imprinted with birds and star beings.

Sara sings the joik–banned but alive–her Saami, Lapplander voice

chanting essences of someone or something

ever changing, no beginning no end.

Mourning Dove sings the story of Coyote who got down safely

by turning himself first into a pine needle–falling fast–

and then into a leaf floating gently to the ground.

I dance to Julia and Debbie sings Danny Boy,

our bones compressing and stretching

pulsing with and responding to neuropeptides, cellular receptors, and

memory upon memory–alive–

and enmeshed with the songs of Jawbone and Sara and Mourning Dove.

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

Click here to download the backing track.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo piano

ca. 16'00"

These three pieces can be performed individually or as a cycle:

        Chaconne (1974), ca. 5'00"

        Scherzo (1973), ca. 5'00"

        Theme and Variations (1970), ca. 6'00"

Click here to view the scores.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo soprano saxophone

ca. 6'40"

Click here to view the score.

Rahilia Hasanova

for piano solo

ca. 20'00"

Warrior's Itinerary for five pianos is dedicated to a hero and represents a hero's life from his childhood to his death. The hero could be somebody who lives and fights for his ideas, wellness, and prosperity of his country, and entirely for the earth.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to a recording of this piece.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo flute

ca. 8'24"

Eastern philospohers recommend us to be in an accordance with our thoughts, words, and actions. Could we follow this rule? Could we ever find some consensus between our chaotic feelings, wishes, and everyday lives? Our behavior is a reflection of our inner dialogs that are mirrors of our understanding of what we are as individuals. Our everyday efforts to understand ourselves and fight through every hardship are reflected in our inner dialogs.

I hope that this short explanation helps to feel the idea of the sonata for flute consensus.

Click here to view the score.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo organ

ca. 18'28"

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Rahilia Hasanova

for solo tuba

ca. 6'00"

Watching purple spiders on the silver net of the window, I heard Tibetan horns: They sounded sadly through hairs of willows...The evening down was painting on them.

Click here to view the score.

Rahilia Hasanova

for piano

ca. 48'00"

Cheshma (alternate spelling is Cheshme) is a cycle of 12 preludes for solo piano. Cheshme means a spring - an unearthed mineral water, cold and fresh, with many health benefits. At the same time Cheshme is the representation of the multilayered Azerbaijani traditional music full of emotions, beautiful melodies, unrepeatable rhythmical patterns. Creating this piano cycle I was inspired by perfectness of the nature and music of my country.

The subtitle for this piece is "The Spring."

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to a recording of Rahilia Hasanova performing Prelude No. 1.

Click here to listen to a recording of Rahilia Hasanova performing Prelude No. 4.

Rahilia Hasanova

for bass clarinet

ca. 11'08"

Penetrations was premiered by the incredible musician, clarinetist, and composer Gleb Kanasevich in Boston, 2016. This composition represents connections between nature and life. Looking through into deep, zooming in and out all connections and related elements can be found.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the recording.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo guitar

ca. 12'00"

...quiet afternoon...Heavy clouds form on the horizon above the sea...

Clouds loom and impressively grow...Dark ash-colored shadows crawl

along clouds, painting faces and exaggerated animals. Hovering over

clouds swim touching the surface of the sea...then through me...then

looming fly out of me...then behind me. Everything looms growing and

changing images. Drops of water sprinkle my face...wind stirs waves, the

sea sand, my clothes, and looming clouds into a whirling storm...

...quiet afternoon kept the secret about the coming storm...

...looming clouds impressively grew...

...predicting the storm.

Click here to view the score.

Rahilia Hasanova

for piano

ca. 8'00"

Jasmine Petals is a piano cycle of the seven colorful emotional miniatures. Impressed by my own thoughts about fugitiveness and fragileness of our lives, full of unexpected changes and disappointments, sad or joyful shakes, I composed these seven reflections. The contemplation of beauty and gentleness of jasmine flowers, coming and vanishing recalling fulfill the sounding of these pieces. They are individualized regarding their textures and forms. But actually they are short improvisations that relatively express my feelings, disappearing through space measurements and time, like drying and dropping down jasmine petals. Two miniatures of the cycle, miniatures V and VII, represent an idea of clocks that accompany us from our childhood to the end. As getting dry, jasmine flowers lose its petals as time shrinking out day-by-day... minute-by-minute...

My friend, you said, “ Time is Evil”

I think, “ Time is Happiness”

And Sender is Heaven

It can be short or lon

Your choice

- Rahilia Hasanova

The recording of this piece was from by Adila Javadzade at National Art Museum of Azerbaijan.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the recording.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo organ

ca. 30'00"

Click here to view the score.

Rahilia Hasanova

for solo flute

ca. 10'00"

Fleeting Memories is a cycle of six simple pieces for Flute solo. They were published in 1987 but never performed as a whole cycle. The premiere of the Fleeting Memories took place at the Brandeis University, Boston in 2017 Performer: Jill Dreeben

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the recording.