- Moveable Types (2004)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for two cellos
This piece was performed by cellists Gita Ladd and Juan Sebastian Delgado at the Livewire Festival of Contemporary Music on 24 October 2024 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Recording and audio engineering was done by Alan Wonneberger.
Click here to watch a video of the performance.
- MESA sto mesa ("INSIDE the inside") (2006)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for actress, flute, cello, video, and tape
- Me tropo ypeniktiko ("In an Allusive Way") (2002)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for percussion (4 players) and pre-recorded synthesizer
The piece is part of the music theatre work "Rabila Co" mixing live music with speech, poetry, electroacoustic music, physical and digital imagery, and dance. Rabila Co was performed between 4th-6th October 2003 at the Theatre Xororoes, Athens, Greece. The concept, musical composition and overall direction was undertaken by Sofia Kamayianni, with choreography by Olymbia Agalianou.
The video is of a performance by the Kroussis ensemble under the direction of Kostas Sifakis.
Click here to watch a video of the performance.
- Double Bass Quartet (2002)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for double bass
ca. 3'40"
The recording is of Vangelis Zografos performing on double bass.
Click here to listen to the recording (YouTube).
- Rabila Co (2001)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for percussion (4 players), and tape
The piece is part of the music theatre work "Rabila Co" mixing live music with speech, poetry, electroacoustic music, physical and digital imagery, and dance. Rabila Co was performed between 4th-6th October 2003 at the Theatre Xororoes, Athens, Greece. The concept, musical composition and overall direction was undertaken by Sofia Kamayianni, with choreography by Olymbia Agalianou.
The video is of a performance by the Kroussis ensemble under the direction of Kostas Sifakis.
Click here to watch a video of the performance.
- Clepsydra Mm (2009)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for flute, clarinet, percussion, and electronics
ca. 11'27"
This piece has a narrative character obviously connected with time as all the stories. I cannot not specify the story that it tells, as it was more or less abstract in my mind during the composition of the piece. However, the path after some time revealed itself and became clear. The live instruments are always in a dialogue with the tape. It was part of the project “3x3 Contemporary Music from Greece and the USA”.
Clepsydra is the Greek word for hourglass.
Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.
- Vides yia stravoxyla ("Cranky Pasta Recipe") (2006)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for soprano, saxophone, tuba, cello, piano, and actress
ca. 10'30"
This piece is actually a cooking recipe, but one whose instructions are fantastical rather than realistic. It aims to trigger the listener’s imagination and alternative outlook through humor. The score is a graphic one with many ‘open’ elements that invite experiment and interpretation. This score was studied and realized cooperatively by the composer and the specific ensemble involved. The Storytelling Project was an eclectic mixture of contemporary music and narration – a musical performance featuring elements of theatre mixed with instruments, vocals, electronics, improvisation, original texts and movement.
Storytelling Project, Spiza Patras, European Capital of Culture, 9 Μay 2006
Sofia Kamayianni: composition, piano, percussion
Rania Kelaiditi: actress
Dina Mantzari: soprano
Irina Dimaki: violoncello
Dora Panagopoulou: composition, piano, percussion,
Joe Tornabene: composition, saxophone, actor
Tim Ward: composition, tuba, live electronics.
Click here to watch a video of the performance.
- Workshop of Dreams (2005)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for flute, clarinet, cello, piano, and percussion
Written for amateur players, or players unaccustomed to contemporary music
- The Mystery of r/r/r (2009)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for piano quartet (violin, viola, cello, and piano)
The piece, written in 2004, is built from three parts with bridge passages between each part in the form of solo piano sections. The mystery refers to my esoteric world at that time as well as to several abstract senses that I could not explain to myself. The ostinato of the third part is based on a Greek word meaning 'unsolved', with the mystery ending up in this way.
The linked video recording was performed by Airi Yoshioka (violin), Maria Lambros (viola), Gita Ladd (cello), and Audrey Andrist (piano).
Click here to view the performance.
- Arithmosofia-Arithmoplixia (2003)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for one violin, three cellos, and two basses
In ancient times people discovered that the study of numbers and their relation between them could lead them to wisdom, to the knowledge of holy rules–the universal laws?–and to the growth of their mentality. ARITHMOSOFIA .
What are numbers for us today? An endless expression of quantity? What happened to their previous quality? It seems that we are living in a cataclysm among thousands of crazy numbers, which “allow” us to communicate. ARITHMOPLIXIA.
So, this piece had the meaning to show the huge distance between the wisdom of "number" (arithmos-sofia) in ancient times and its devolution nowadays where you use it and you hear it everywhere and all the time in a crazy, absurd way. The exaggeration of the text in the second movement shows this frenetic reality.
The piece was selected in 2004 for the annual contemporary music workshops held in the Athens Megaron concert hall and organized by the Greek Composers' Union under the direction of Theodore Antoniou.
Click here to view the score (English).
Click here to view the score (Greek).
- Stigmi-Anadrasi ("Moment-Feedback") (2002)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for string quartet
ca. 4'45"
Click here to view the score and listen to a recording of the second movement.
- HUMANUS ZPKO9/3-Phase experiment (2001)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for recorder and tape
ca. 7'15"
A scientific experiment in a lab. Scientists have created a humanomorphus being and an animal. The being is called HUMANUSZPKO9. The experiment takes place in three phases and the piece refers to the procedure of these phases (observations of the scientists and reactions of the HUMANUS).
The piece is dedicated to Patrick Richmond, who is performing.
Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.
- Inconsistency (2000)
-
Sofia Kamayianni
for piano, cello, and small percussion
ca. 7'15"
Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.
- Thousand Year Dreaming (1990)
-
Annea Lockwood
for oboe/english horn, A clarinet/contrabass clarinet, two tenor trombones, percussion, four didjeridu, voice, and slide projections
To me the didjeridu is the sound of the earth’s core, pulsing serenely - an expression of the life force. When I started working on the score, images from the Lascaux cave paintings came to mind as in some way connected with that resonating pulsing. Dated to the Aurignacian Paleolithic period (ca. 17,000 BC), they contain recurring symbols such as checkerboards and tridents which are not yet well understood. However, the intense awe and love with which the animal images have been created are vividly clear. Like sound, they also manifest the life force.
From discussions of Korean musical traditions with composer Jin Hi Kim came ideas about cyclically unfolding structures which helped greatly as I tried to work out a natural shape for these sounds and images - four sections with the following subtitles: breathing and dreaming; the Chi stirs; floating in mid-air; in full bloom.
- Night and Fog (1987)
-
Annea Lockwood
for baritone voice, baritone saxophone, percussion, and pre-recorded sound (stereo)
These three texts, by Osip Mandelstam, the Russian poet who died in the Gulag, and by Carolyn Forché, the contemporary American writer, span fifty-eight years and evoke the same darkness, the murderous State. The first and third songs are settings of Mandelstam’s “I was washing outside in the darkness” (1921), and the first two lines of “The Age” (1923), written in the harsh aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the famine which followed. Both poems have been translated by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin.
Forché’s “The Visitor” was written in 1979 after she lived for two years in El Salvador at a time when the military’s oppression was intense and the paramilitary death squads sent the numbers of the “disappeared” soaring. “Night and Fog” (“Nacht und Nebel”) was the Nazi euphemism for the Third Reich’s death camps. “Night and Fog” was commissioned by Thomas Buckner.
Click here to listen to some available excerpts.
- Monkey Trips (1995)
-
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 purchase the CD through Presto Music.
- Luminescence (2004)
-
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 listen on Annea Lockwood's website.
- Jitterbug (2007)
-
Annea Lockwood
for two amplified performers and six sound channels
Jitterbug, for two musicians and six channels of prerecorded sound, was commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 2006 for the dance eyeSpace. In Jitterbug, the musicians are interpreting photographs of rocks taken for this project by Gwen Deely, as graphic scores; these are intricate in their patterns and color shifts and I found them in a creek bed, up in the Montana Rockies. A pre-recorded surround-sound score draws on insect sounds: aquatic insects which I recorded in the small lakes and backwaters of the Flathead Valley, Montana; and ‘air’ insects generously made available to me by Lang Elliott, of the NatureSound Studio. A curious aspect of the underwater recordings was that these strong sound signals were being created by beetles and other microscopic insects which were always invisible to me, although the water was clear and often shallow. Deep tones from bowed gongs and a piano infiltrate this insect world, providing a strong contrast.
Gustavo Aguilar, William Winant and Joseph Kubera, with audio engineers Maggi Payne and Marilyn Ries generously recorded these sounds for the project.
Click here to listen on Annea Lockwood's website.
- Immersion (1998)
-
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.
- The Angle of Repose (1991)
-
Annea Lockwood
for baritone voice, khaen, and alto flute
The Angle of Repose is an evening song, commissioned by Thomas Buckner and scored for baritone, alto flute and khaen (a Thai mouth organ). It incorporates two texts. The first is an Ojibwa Indian text quoted by Peter Matthiessen in his book Nine-Headed Dragon River. The second is from a letter written in 1904 by Rainer Maria Rilke to his wife, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, while on holiday in Denmark. The angle of repose is the angle of inclination of a slope at which sliding earth and boulders come to rest.
Click here to purchase the album through Lovely Music.