- Rabila Co (2001)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for percussion (4 players), and tape
- Clepsydra Mm (2009)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for flute, clarinet, percussion, and electronics
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.
- Vides yia stravoxyla ("Cranky Pasta Recipe") (2006)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for soprano, saxophone, cello, tuba, piano, and actress
ca. 10'30"
- Workshop of Dreams (2005)
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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)
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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 a performance (YouTube).
- Arithmosofia-Arithmoplixia (2003)
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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 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)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for string quartet
ca. 4'45"
- HUMANUS ZPKO9/3-Phase experiment (2001)
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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 3 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.
- Inconsistency (2000)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for piano, cello, and small percussion
ca. 7'15"
- Thousand Year Dreaming (1990)
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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)
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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.
- Monkey Trips (1995)
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Annea Lockwood
for six layers; 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. (Note: this score is for study purposes only, and is not available for purchase.)
Click here to purchase the MP3 through Lorelt Records Limited.
- Luminescence (2004)
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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)
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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)
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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 listen on Annea Lockwood's website.
- The Angle of Repose (1991)
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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.
- ReWeavings (2010)
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Ruth Lomon
for flute, TAB flute, B-flat clarinet, piano, violoncello, and vibraphone
1. Mizmaze 2. Warp and Weft 3. Navajo: Weaving the Yei 4. Penelope’s Web
1. ‘Mizmaze’ is an intricate network of pathways enclosed by hedges or plantations.
2. ‘Warp and Weft’ has two textures running through the 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.
3. ‘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 songs of the Navajo and some chants.
4. ‘Penelope’s Web’ is a proverbial expression for work which is ongoing but never completed. The myth gave me a frame for the changing textures of this movement, building a thick texture with all the instruments and thinning to long solo flute passages accompanied by vibraphone tremolo chords.
- The Furies (Erinyes) (1977)
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Ruth Lomon
for oboe, oboe d'amore, and english horn
ca. 10'45"
"The Furies" (Erinyes) was composed for Patricia Morehead in 1977. Scored for oboe, oboe d'amore and English horn, Ms. Morehead plays all three instruments "live" and on the prepared tape. "The Furies" takes full advantage of Ms. Morehead's extended woodwind techniques and they develop their own personae. The Furies, the avenging spirits of classical mythology (Mega, Tisiphone and Alecto), personified conscience. Webster's Dictionary also refers to furies as ''a state of inspired exaltation." I think that you will find Ms. Morehead's performance combines the best of both interpretations.
"The Furies" is dedicated to Ms. Morehead.
- Symbiosis (1983)
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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.
- Iatiku (1983)
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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)
The performers in the recording are currently unknown.