Eleanor Hovda

for chamber orchestra

ca. 13'45"

This piece was commissioned by the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra.

This project was supported in part through funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Click here to view the score with composer's notes.

Click here to view the score with conductor's notes.

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

Eleanor Hovda

for flute, B-flat clarinet, percussion, piano, and bass

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Eleanor Hovda

for flute, B-flat clarinet, violin, and cello

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Eleanor Hovda

for two double basses

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Eleanor Hovda

for clarinet, electric guitar, cello, doublebass, and percussion

ca. 13'30"

"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."

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to a recording by Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Eleanor Hovda

for B-flat clarinet, marimba, temple blocks, vibraphone, and piano

ca. 15'15"

...then reverberating, they would create all songs.

For Zeitgeist, developed during Music in Motion Project

Click here to view the score.

Eleanor Hovda

for flute, oboe, bassoon, violin, and cello

For the Sylmar Chamber Ensemble, with gratitude to the McKnight Foundation

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."

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Eleanor Hovda

for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello

Click here to view the score.

Eleanor Hovda

for nine flutes

ca. 13'30"

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Click here to listen to a recording.

Eleanor Hovda

for guitar quartet

Armonia, completed in September, 1992, was commissioned by the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet through the Composers Commissioning Program administered by the Minnesota Composers Forum with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

Click here to view the score.

Lois V Vierk and Anita Feldman

with choreographic contributions by Rhonda Price

for 2 tap dancers and 2 high voices

ca. 16'05"

Swash is one of six music/tap dance works co-created by tap dance choreographer Anita Feldman and composer Lois V Vierk during the 1980s and 90s. From the very beginning, choreographer and composer worked together on all major aspects of each piece. They have always felt that in their work, music and dance are one. It's impossible to say where one leaves off and the other begins. The piece was named for the movement of water splashing up from an ocean wave onto the sand of the beach. This concept of "swash" inspired a wide variety of visual and sound ideas in the creation of the work.

Besides the above, some of the movement/sound materials are influenced by Hambone, an African-American music and dance form that uses the whole body as a percussion instrument to be slapped, brushed, etc. with one's hands. Hambone was originally developed by enslaved Africans in the US, Guyana, and the Caribbean. In the US, use of percussion instruments by slaves was banned in most places, starting in the mid 18th century. This was done out of fear that people would be able to transmit messages via drum patterns that would incite revolution against the system of slavery. Hence the body itself became the source of percussive sounds.

In Swash the slapping, clapping and sliding of the hands not only contributes to sound rhythms, but also propels the body’s movements. As the piece progresses, the action of one foot hitting the other both contributes to the rhythms and propels the foot movements of the tap dancing in a similar way. The costumes in Swash were designed by Denise Mitchell. They were sewn from a vinyl type fabric, which permits hand slaps and brushes to be clearly audible. Dancers also wear hand “instruments” made of velcro to further augment the sound.

Some of the vocal sounds in Swash derive from the South African Zulu language, which is rich in musical slides and in a variety of tongue clicks. Adelaide Ngoneni Cele was the language consultant. The two singers in the piece, one on either side of the stage, are amplified, so that their percussive sounds blend with the dancers' taps and body slaps, and their sustained sounds and long glissandos can be heard flowing over the taps, enveloping the stage. The American folk form Eephing, a folk form that developed in the Appalachians during the 19th century, is also an influence in this piece. Eephing, incorporating both exhaled and inhaled sung syllables, was used to holler to farm animals. The last part of Swash brings out four women's names, American and Zulu: Anita (for Anita Feldman), Nokuthula (for Ms. Cele's mother), Nora (for the composer's mother) and Ngoneni (for Ngoneni Cele).

Swash was premiered at Woodpeckers Tap Dance Studio in New York City in 1994. Subsequent performances include Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), SUNY Albany, SUNY Buffalo and Columbia Festival of the Arts (MD). The tap parts have been performed by Anita Feldman, Rhonda Price, and Sheri Laroche. Vocal parts have been performed by Dora Ohrenstein, Susan Botti, and Lisa Bielawa.

Swash was made with a New State Council on the Arts Composer Commission and a New York Sate Council on the Arts Company Grant. Special thanks to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for additional support.

Audio recording is of vocal parts only (no tap), plus there is a demo of Zulu language click sounds. Recording is in three parts: 1) Vocal parts plus click track, 2) Vocal parts only, 3) Zulu demo. Singers are Lisa Bielawa (voice 1) and Katie Geissinger (voice 2). Zulu language demo by Adelaide Ngoneni Cele.

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

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Video recorded live in concert (a good look at the choreography but sound quality is mediocre). Tap dance performed by Sheri LaRoche and Rhonda Price. Singers are Lisa Bielawa and Katie Geissenger. Video recorded June 20, 1998 at The Kitchen in NYC.

Click here to view the video recording.

Lois V Vierk and Anita Feldman

for solo tap dancer on Tap Dance Instrument (patented), cello, and marimba

ca. 9'37"

Twister is one of six music/tap dance works co-created by tap dance choreographer Anita Feldman and composer Lois V Vierk during the 1980s and 90s and is one of a number of works that Feldman created with various composers for her Tap Dance Instrument (patented). It had long been Feldman's belief that music made by the feet was equal to music made by musical instruments. Desiring to dance on an instrument that would allow the dancers' feet to make resonant and varied music in any performance situation, she joined forces with San Francisco instrument builder Daniel Schmidt to design the modular and portable Tap Dance Instrument, which was then constructed by Schmidt in 1987. The Tap Dance Instrument consists of six platforms, each about 9 inches off the ground. They can be arranged in any desired configuration. Three of the modules are hexagons of approximately 5 feet across, made of different woods and constructed in varying ways, so that they have individual resonances and timbres. A fourth platform is the "Tap Marimba" with 7 pitched keys. These large wooden keys can be replaced with alternates, so a number of tunings are possible. The remaining two platforms are smaller and are topped with thick brass slabs. They ring like bells, one higher pitched and the other lower. Twister uses 4 of the 6 floor modules, namely the wooden oak module, the Tap Marimba, and the two brass-topped modules.

Twister originated from the artists' desire to make a piece that would feature a solo dancer's virtuoso tapping ability. The work combines tap, cello, and marimba to create sounds and movements inspired by wind -- from gentle breezes to twisting tornadoes.

Feldman and Vierk worked together on all major aspects of the work. They experimented with different tapping techniques on each of the Tap Dance Instrument floor modules. They developed sound materials and phrases together, and these later turned into larger sections and then into the entire piece. The cello and marimba parts were composed to intertwine with the tap dance part.

Composer and choreographer commission fees for Twister were made possible by a grant from Meet The Composer's Composer/Choreographer Project, a national program funded by the Ford Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trust.

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The premiere of Twister was at a music concert presented at Merkin Hall in New York City by the ISCM (International Society of Contemporary Music) on March 18, 1993. Anita Feldman Tap (Anita Feldman's dance company) performed Twister many times after that, at both dance and music venues. Performance highlights include New York City venues Town Hall, Woodpeckers Tap Dance Center, The Kitchen, and radio WNYC-fm, as well as at Dance Place in Washington DC. The piece was performed in Germany at Podewil concert hall in Berlin, Theaterhaus in Frankfurt, Galerie Rose in Hamburg, and Pro Musica Nova Festival, Radio Bremen.

Over the years Twister has been danced by Anita Feldman and by Rhonda Price. Cellists have included Ted Mook, Mark Stewart, and Bruce Wang. Marimba players have included Tigger Benford, Michael Lipsey, Gary Schall, and Thad Wheeler. Costume design is by Denise Mitchell. Lighting design is by Sarah Sidman.

This piece was recorded live in concert at Merkin Hall, New York City, March 18, 1993. The performers were Anita Feldman dancing on Tap Dance Instrument, Mark Stewart on cello, and Tigger Benford on marimba. 

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

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Twister was video recorded live in concert June 20, 1998, at The Kitchen (NYC). This provides a good look at the choreography, although the sound quality is fair. The performers in this recording were Rhonda Price dancing on Tap Dance Instrument, Bruce Wang on cello, and Thad Wheeler on marimba.

Click here to view the video recording.

Lois V Vierk and Anita Feldman

for 3 tap dancers on Tap  Dance Instrument (patented), 1 percussionist, and live electronics

ca. 11'42"

Hexa exists in two versions: the original 1988 dance concert version, and a slightly shorter version which was used in a video produced by Jan Roberts-Breslin in 1990 and subsequently released on CD (audio track only) by Innova Records in 2010 (Innova 233 "25 Years of New York New Music: The NYFA Collection"). The audio recording of this slightly shorter version is notable because tap dance, percussion, and electronic processing were recorded and mixed in a sound studio. The sound quality of the CD is excellent unlike, of course, that of video recordings made in concert. Hexa is a tap dance/music work and also stands alone as a music piece.

The original dance concert version has 316 measures and the CD version has 260 measures. Small cuts were made in the original version throughout the piece, to produce the CD version. Scores of both versions are included here. The CD version appears first and the original dance concert version follows.

Hexa is one of six music/tap dance works co-created by tap dance choreographer Anita Feldman and composer Lois V Vierk during the 1980s and 90s. This piece was the inaugural work for Feldman's Tap Dance Instrument (patented). It had long been Feldman's belief that music made by the feet was equal to music made by musical instruments. Desiring to dance on an instrument that would allow the dancers' feet to make resonant and varied music in any performance situation, she joined forces with San Francisco instrument builder Daniel Schmidt to design the modular and portable Tap Dance Instrument, which was then constructed by Schmidt in 1987. The Tap Dance Instrument consists of six platforms, each about 9 inches off the ground. They can be arranged in any desired configuration. Three of the modules are hexagons of approximately 5 feet across, made of different woods and constructed in varying ways, so that they have individual resonances and timbres. A fourth platform is the "Tap Marimba" with 7 pitched keys. These large wooden keys can be replaced with alternates, so a number of tunings are possible. The remaining two platforms are smaller and are topped with thick brass slabs. They ring like bells, one higher pitched and the other lower.

Hexa was named for all the sixes in the piece (hexagonal floor shapes, six feet on the Tap Dance Instrument, six percussion instruments played by the musician) and for the magical connotations of "hex" and "hex signs".

Opening the work, tap dancers' feet play a tune on the tap marimba, accompanied by the percussionist's muted cymbals. Dancers' arms, legs and bodies create visual designs as the tune moves the three performers back and forth across the tap marimba. Gradually the dancers move to non-pitched wood platforms and then to the brass floor modules.

Audio CD recording is by:

Anita Feldman, David Parker, Rhonda Price dancing on Tap Dance Instrument (patented)

Percussionist Gary Schall

Live electronics with Lexicon PCM 42 by Lois V Vierk

from CD Innova 233 "25 Years of New York New Music: The NYFA Collection"

Click here to view the CD on Innova.

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

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Video recorded live in concert (a good look at the choreography but sound quality is mediocre) 

Tap dance performed by Anita Feldman, Tim Grandia, Rhonda Price

Kerry Meads, percussionist

Live electronics by Lois V Vierk

Video recorded live in concert June 20, 1998, at The Kitchen (NYC)

Click here to view the video recording.

Mercedes Otero

for mezzo soprano, flute, oboe, harp, and contrabass

ca. 16'15"

The poems used in “De Laguna” are from the book Laguna, by Alberto Arvelo Ramos, a contemporary Venezuelan poet. Translations by Mercedes Otero. 

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Lois V Vierk

for brass quintet

ca. 6'00"

This is a short and lighthearted work. Composed for the Chestnut Brass Company, it's a demonstration of the varied instrumental colors of the brass quintet. The image that inspired my sounds was a sunbow that I'd seen on a hike in the Sierras, with rainbow-like colors that appeared when sunlight shone through the spray of a small waterfall.

Sunbow was commisssioned by the Chestnut Brass Company with support from the Pew Charitable Trust.

This recording is by the Chestnut Brass Company, live in concert July 7, 1997.

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

Lois V Vierk

for eight ryūteki flutes

ca. 22'33"

Hyaku Man no Kyū (One Million Spheres) is for 8 ryūteki flutes, of the Gagaku Japanese court music ensemble. It employs Gagaku playing techniques and embraces the breathy sound of this bamboo instrument with large finger holes, lacquered inside and out. The work is also influenced by minimalist long-tone music, especially the beautiful and uncompromising walls of sound composed by Phill Niblock.

The work employs instruments in pairs. Ryūteki 1 and 2 begin with repeated short phrases sliding up to the pitch B in the midrange. There are pitch slides, breath accents and dynamic crescendo/decrescendo patterns. Gradually all the instrumental pairs enter - - ryūteki 3-4, 5-6, 7-8. All the pairs play the same material as 1-2 although with fewer repeats, in a kind of giant, slowly-moving canon. Pair 1-2 moves down in pitch, with repeated short phrases centered on A, G, F, E, as the other pairs follow. The pitches then push upward, with 1-2 moving through midrange pitches F, G, A, B and then ascending stepwise through the octave above, finishing in the highest register of the instrument and finally settling on high B. Again, all the other pairs follow, with fewer repetitions than the first pair.

I think of this piece as a pulsating and directional sound mass made of many parts, say a million, and that's the origin of the title. Each successive pitch center is allotted a shorter amount of time as the piece proceeds. The slowly changing sound mass moves from lower to higher energy with its movements through pitches and instrumental range, constantly developing phrases with more and more nuance, accents and articulations as the work moves towards its conclusion.

I wrote Hyaku Man no Kyū in 1983 during my 2-year stay in Tōkyō to study Gagaku with Mr. Sukeyasu Shiba, then the lead ryūteki player of the emperor's court orchestra, Kunaicho Gakubu. Previous to that I had studied Gagaku for 10 years in Los Angeles with Mr. Suenobu Tōgi, UCLA professor and previously also of the Kunaicho Gakubu. The work was premiered in New York City in 1983.

Recorded live in concert at the premiere on May 4, 1983 at Experimental Intermedia, New York City. One ryūteki was played live along with a tape of the 7 other parts, which had been recorded previously at India Navigation Studios, New York  City.  Live and recorded ryūteki parts performed  by Lois V Vierk.

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

Lois V Vierk

for three clarinets

ca. 4'43"

In this short work, the three clarinets act together to produce what I call one "sound shape". The elements of the sound shapes in this piece include dynamic gissandi and held notes, crescendo/decrescendo patterns, and fast moving notes. Over the course of the work, sound shapes flow from the extreme high register down through the mid range to the low register. Material is presented in imitative passages. Because the instruments are of the same timbre, all melodic nuances are clearly audible.

This work was influenced by certain pieces of Gagaku, Japanese court music, which I was studying and performing at the time in ensembles led by Gagaku master and UCLA professor Suenobu Tõgi. In these particular pieces, several ryuteki flutes (my instrument) or several hickiriki double reeds play canons in free rhythm. A sound at once massive and transparent is produced.

As for the title of my composition, the intensity of the sound of three clarinets, especially playing loudly in the high register, reminds me of the unrelenting heat of the southern California desert. 

Recording info:

Recorded live, April 16, 1978, at a concert of the Independent Composers Association in their "Second Second Storey Series" at Larchmont Center, Los Angeles.

Clarinetists - Alan Solomon, Dave Ocker, Laurel Hall

For more information about this concert check out the excellent blog Mixed Meters by Dave Ocker:

http://mixedmeters.com/2008/05/second-second-story-series-concert-one.html

The present work was originally the first movement of my composition Song for Three Clarinets, which went through yet another renaming, Desert Heat.  Finally I settled on using the first movement only, with the title Small Shadow in the Desert.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Lois V Vierk

 for Gagaku ensemble

ca. 23'56"

Over the 12 years I actively studied Gagaku I discovered many things about sound. It wasn't, to my thinking, "Japanese sound" in particular – but sound. I learned how nuances of sound, such as articulations, dynamic shapes, and pitch bends are not just ornaments but all can serve to move a musical phrase forward. I learned how a number of the same instruments sounding together can make a "wall" of sound that can be at once powerful as well as graceful, with a transparency of texture that allows the subtleties of each instrument to come through. And I experienced music unfolding slowly over a long period of time, unhurried, with elegance.

Many of my early compositions, like more than a few Gagaku pieces, have slow beginnings and gradually gather speed and momentum. Although much of my current work uses other approaches to form, I have returned to this idea in Silversword. It seemed the most natural way to let the musical materials develop. But I have not tried to write Gagaku here. The way that I blend instruments and seek new colors from the blendings is not traditional to Gagaku. And the work's high energy climax built on increasingly dense textures, more and more volume, and repetition of ever-shortening phrases, has more to do with my own sensibilities as a Western composer than with anything in Gagaku.

This piece is named after the Hawaiian silversword plant. On the island of Maui you can ascend 10,000 feet to reach the peak of mount Haleakala. From that precipice you look down into a vast crater ("big enough to hold Manhattan") at an ancient desert strewn with volcanic cinder cones. Volcanic ash has been windswept over the centuries into spectacular stripes and swatches of color -- bright white, brilliant orange, shining black. If you then descend 3,000 feet into the bowl of the crater, you will see magnificent plants scattered like jewels on the ashscape. These are silverswords. Their leaves are like silvery quills that grow out of the arid soil in spherical crowns to catch water from the evening fog. Their bloom spikes rise up to five feet with hundreds of tiny white flowers forming rosettes.

Silversword is dedicated very respectfully to my Gagaku teacher in Tokyo, Mr. Sukeyasu Shiba, and to Reigakusha, the Gagaku ensemble that he founded.

Special thanks especially to Mari Ono and Naoyuki Miura and their organization, Music From Japan (New York City).

Special thanks also to Bob Cummins, David Behrman, Yuji Takahashi, Akemi Naito, Donel Young, Bruce Ide and Karen Pearlman.

Silversword was premiered on July 28, 1996 at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center Festival 1996, New York City.

Audio is an informal recording made in a rehearsal space in Tokyo in June 1996.  There were changes to the score made after this rehearsal and before the premiere in July 1996, most notably to the biwa parts.

Recording by Reigakusha - gagaku ensemble in Tokyo, Artistic Director Sukeyasu Shiba.

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

 Lois V Vierk

for vocal soloist, accordion, violin, cello, and percussion

Back in the 1980s accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek commissioned around 25 composers to write short polkas for his "Ain't Nothin' But a Polka Band"--composers like Elliot Sharp, Al Leroy, Peter Zummo, John King, Bill Obrecht, Mary Jane Leach, David Mahler, David Garland, many more, and me, too. The Klucevsek polka concerts were raucous, fun, clever, and always extremely well-performed. It was a great time being part of these events! Arthur Stidfole wrote the soloist's words for my short piece. Attack Cat Polka takes about 90 seconds.

Recording is by:

Guy Klucevsek, accordion

Thomas Buckner, baritone

Mary Rowell, violin

Erik Friedlander, cello

Bill Ruyle, percussion

from CD:

Starkland ST-218 "Guy Klucevsek: Polka From The Fringe"

http://www.starkland.com/st218/index.htm

Click here to view the score.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Lois V Vierk

for three tenor voices and three bass voices, with conductor

ca. 3'15"

Kana was my first piece for multiples of like-instruments or voices. Soon after writing this short piece I composed TUSK for 18 trombones, Go Guitars for 5 electric guitars, then works for multiple cellos, multiple trumpets, etc. While composing this piece I was a composition student at California Institute of the Arts, and I was also playing ryuteki flute in the Gagaku (Japanese Court Music) ensemble at UCLA. I was very familiar with a Gagaku piece called Etenraku. Kana takes as its starting point the sung version of the flute part of etenraku. The sung version, called shoga, is not performed, but can be thought of as a kind of solfeggio of gestures. The player is supposed to learn and memorize the shoga first, before playing the melody on the flute and before looking at notation. In Kana, I started with the shoga syllables to Etenraku and developed textures of sound organized into three short sections: glissandi, which move into a rhythmic middle section, and then close with sung and whispered glissandi incorporating short rhythmic patterns.

There are some real words in the score. The intentional words are names of two of the instruments in the Gagaku orchestra, namely Taiko (big drum) and Hichiriki (double reed wind instrument).

Recorded live in concert by singers from California Institute of the Arts, conducted by the composer, at the Second Second Story Series, produced by the Independent Composers Association, Los Angeles 1978.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.