- 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.
Click here to listen to some available excerpts.
- 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.
- 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.
- Songs of Remembrance (1996)
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Ruth Lomon
for soprano, mezzo soprano, tenor and baritone accompanied by oboe/english horn and piano
ca. 1 hr 00'45"
Settings of poetry written by Holocaust victims and survivors. Composed in 1996 as a Fellow of the Bunting Institute/Harvard.
Poems in French, German and English. 10 songs.
Click here to listen to a recording.
- Ripples: Artists in Collaboration (1992)
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Patricia Ann Repar
video documentary
ca. 48'10"
Ripples: Artists In Collaboration is a 50-minute film highlighting the collaborative approaches developed by the following artists: visual artists Barbara Kendrick and Sara Krepp; composer Carla Scaletti and computer scientist Alan Craig; composer/percussionist Michael Udow and choreographer/dancer Nancy Udow; and bass-baritone Philip Larson and trumpeter Edwin Harkins.
Click here to view the film Ripples: Artists in Collaboration
- Pendulum Clocks (2014)
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Rahilia Hasanova
for soprano, baritone, percussion, bass clarinet, and clarinet in A, Bb, and Eb
ca. 56'16"
A kitchen lives by its own life even when nobody is home. It breathes, smells, yawns, flinches, claps, and snaps...and listens to... If only you are in your kitchen you are not alone. Your kitchen always has an encrypted dialog with you. If only two of you in the kitchen you are three of you, not two because your kitchen accompanies all your conversations. And keep in mind that your kitchen, where you usually have all your vitally important discussions is not your friend at some point. The kitchen likes a justice. If you are going to tell something to somebody start your conversation from far away. Choose any topic that would not relates to a subject of your previously planned conversation. For example, a long analysis about the history of the evolution of clocks... pendulum clocks! Magnetize! Make a magic! Win! Note that at 40.30 - 41.50 the stage suddenly darkened. Unfortunately the video cannot gives the real sparkling motions that accompany this scene on the stage during live performance.
Opera for two performers, Pendulum Clocks was premiered at the UMBC festival of contemporary music LIVEWIRE-10 on October 26, 2019.
Libretto by Rahilia Hasanova
Performers: Susan Botti, soprano and Gleb Kanasevich, clarinets
Recording engineer: Alan Wonneberger
Click here to watch to a video of the performance on YouTube.
Click here to view the libretto.