- Janus Quartet (1983)
-
Ruth Lomon
for string quartet
ca. 18'30"
The Janus Quartet was composed during a stay at the MacDowell colony in Peterborough, N.H. I was there during the months of November and December in 1983. As I started to work on the quartet the snow began to fall -- it was a very straight snowfall -- not a trace of wind. The windows of my studio looked out on stands of firs and slender birches. The opening of this quartet tries to capture that serenity. The theme is shared between the two violins; the viola and cello are playing a D harmonic with the viola playing the note a quarter tone higher. You probably won't experience this as another tone but as a beat or pulsing of the note. This section is titled ''when the snow is falling." There follows a lively melodic and rhythmic development which closes at midpoint in the piece with a section reflecting the quarter-tone pedal point of the opening and leading into a recapitulation of what I'll call the ''snow'' theme, this time with the theme dispersed through the four instruments. This recapitulation leads into the second section of the quartet titled ''Remembrance of things passed." You may hear an echo of Schumann, a short phrase from Barber's Adagio for Strings, perhaps too short to pick it out but these echoes set the mood of this section. A quote from Beethoven's 15th quartet heightens the drama and leads into a climax coming to rest on a calm, cantabile close. The cellist closes with a theme which has been used as an accompaniement to the little fragments of Schumann and Barber. It is a quote from a setting of Blake's poem INJUNCTION which I composed in 1962.
The Angel that presided o'er my birth said
"little creature born of joy and mirth
Go love without the help of anything on earth".
Composed for the Janus String Quartet during a residency at the MacDowell Colony.
- Weaving(s) (2009)
-
Ruth Lomon
for clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, vibraphone/tomtoms, and piano
Weaving(s):
MizmazeWarp and WeftNavajo: Weaving the YeiPenelope's Web"Mizmaze" is an intricate network of pathways enclosed by hedges or plantations. "Hehath walked the whole labyrinth and mizmaze of his life." (Beza)''Warp and Weft'' has two textures running through this movement to create amusical "warp and weft." The pizzicato of the 'cello throughout the movement isintertwined 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 theNavajo.''Penelope's Web'' is a proverbial expression for anything which is perpetually doingand never done. While Ulysses was off fighting the wars Penelope wove her tapestryevery day and undid the work every evening to keep her suitors at bay. She held off theirproposals by saying that she would not make a commitment to any of them until she hadfinished 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 thicktexture with the 4 instruments, and thinning to long solo passages with tremolo chordaltreatments in the vibraphone and piano solos.
- Shadowing (1995)
-
Ruth Lomon
for piano quartet
ca. 13'45"
"Wolves can move very softly. The sound they make is in the manner of Los Angelos Timidos, the shyest angels. First they fall back and shadow the creature they're curious about. Then, all of a sudden, they appear ahead of the creature peeking half-face with one golden eye from behind a tree. Abrupt the wolf turns and vanishes in a blur of white ruff and plumed tail, only to backtrack and pop up behind the stranger again. That is shadowing".
from "Women Who Run With Wolves", Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author
The performers in this recording are currently unknown.
- Metamorphosis (1984)
-
Ruth Lomon
for cello and piano
ca. 19'00"
1. The Source. A virtuosic movement for the cello in a spirited dialogue with the piano
2. Emergence. The cello has a dramatic soliloquy with encouragement from the piano.
3. Imago. ‘Tempo di tango’ opens the 3rd movement leading into a swift, vibrant duo that concludes with a recap of ‘tempo di tango’.
Commissioned for the Carnegie Recital Hall debut of Elizabeth Dolin.
- Dreaming Fire, Tasting Rain
-
Anna Rubin
for flute, B-flat clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano
ca. 10'30"
- De Nacht: Lament for Malcolm X (1983)
-
Anna Rubin
for soprano, violin, viola, violoncello, contrabass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and piano
- Flames Rising and Falling to the Sea (1988)
-
Anna Rubin
for string quartet
Flames Rising from the Sea (1988) for string quartet is a one-movement work emphasizing melismatic and florid writing in a hereophonic texture. The note D perfumes the piece anchoring the atonal language of the piece.
- Marguerite's Dance (1981)
-
Anna Rubin
for flute, cello, and percussion
Marguerite’s Dance (1981)- Infusion Ensemble, is a trio for flute, cello and percussion and 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 Brooklyn’s . The Barge and at 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.
- Vision of Blue (1999)
-
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
- Red Mountain Note (2004)
-
Patricia Ann Repar
flute/piccolo, B-flat clarinet, voice, violin, violoncello, contrabass, and tape
ca. 11'00"
Note to performers and listeners: written in celebration of my cousin Jerry Leon who made the last of his many adventures on earth while skiing in February of 2004.
Note to self: Find the Hawaiian chant secretly embedded on the ‘Ulalena’ CD; And on ‘The Master Chanters of Hawaii’ use “e ulu, e ulu, kini o ke akua” (Inspire us, inspire us, O gods).
Note to Jerry: whispers of other times and places
both mythic and real
souls and gypsies
long passed and yet to come
but I see you
bright, strong, and clear
like water
atop, within, above, and beyond
Red Mountain.
- Re-Imagining (1995)
-
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.
- (out) (in) . . . the OPEN (1992)
-
Patricia Ann Repar
for flute, oboe, alto saxophone, vibraphone, violoncello
ca. 10'15"
(out)(in)...the OPEN is written in honor of the legendary jazz singer/songwriter Billie Holiday. On the liner notes of Billie's 1956 recording The Essential Billie Holliday--Carnegie Hall Concert, Gilbert Millstein wrote that "Billie was the victim of a world which really could not have cared much less--either for her or for any artist whose talent might be grudgingly acknowledged or eagerly exploited, but who made society uncomfortable or uneasy." Billie's way of singing defiantly exposed herself and her listeners-- an experience they yearned for and resented all at the same time. As a way of highlighting Billie's courage to be open, to say it and sing it how it is (not how we might want to hear it), (out)(in)...the OPEN is structured entirely around breath sounds. It is hoped that concentration on breath, by both performers and audience, will evoke some of this vulnerability that Billie and her listeners longed to experience.
- Turbolenze del Blu (2014)
-
Caterina Calderoni
for violin, cello, and piano
I happen to visualize sounds as a colour spread by means of borad brush-strokes over the timeline. Its shade, although apparenlty even, discloses ripllings, thickenings and nuances that make it restless and sometimes violent. Like the blue of deep waters or moonless nights.
- Murex (2010)
-
Caterina Calderoni
for flute, cello, B-flat clarinet, and piano
ca. 8'00"
The formal structure of this work follows a spiral scheme based on a sequence of four sonic states (A: resonance – B: thickening – C: shattering – D: echo) that recurres 4 times, each time in a wider span of time. Moments of suspension (Tempo sospeso) frame and break in this cyclic process in order to reveal the sonic substance from which the spiral originates. Just like the shape of a shell (murex), the spiral suggests an endless process “towards infinity”.
- Song in High Grasses (1985)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for soprano, flute, cello, and bowed piano
ca. 12'14"
- Onyx (1991)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for chamber orchestra
ca. 13'45"
This piece was commissioned by the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra.
- The Lion's Head (1971)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, B-flat clarinet, violin, and cello
- Mountain Goat File (1992)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for clarinet, electric guitar, cello, doublebass, and percussion
"Mountain Goat File is made for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. It is a piece from other pieces, because BOAC All-Stars wanted to perfrom an already-extant piece, and I decided to make a piece where the new ideas would be the combination of instruments and the overall form, but the specific music for each instrument would be borrowed from other pieces. My task was to work with already-extant material in a new format. Mountain Goat File, as a title, comes from a file I have in my computer for things that relate tangentally or, only if one makes a huge conceptual leaps from one place to another. I have been interested for some time in "journey music" - music that deals with testing boundaries, traversing shifiting landscapes and projecting evolving fields of energy. Mountain Goat File leaps, rather than shifts, from pinnacle to pinnacle. Sometimes it is isolated and slippery there, and sometimes it is a sociable plateau."
- Hollows (1985)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, oboe, bassoon, violin, and cello
This piece is a very introspective probing of "the secret life" of the winds and strings. It resonates hollow places and takes long lengths of time to excavate and articulate the "sound around the sound."
- Curves (1988)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello