- Skra (2013)
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Linda Dusman
for B-flat clarinet and fixed electronic media
ca. 10'00"
I found the inspiration for Skra in the artist Mary McDonnell’s Red Line Drawings (marymcdonnellart.com). The meditative quality of these works, seemingly simple “parallel” lines, upon contemplation feel as though one may be seeing their intimacy from a great distance. I also love the beauty of their “primitiveness,” a sense of a work of art in the act of becoming itself. Creating the composition followed a similar conceptual process, as I used recordings of Mary making the drawings and the ambient sounds in her studio to accompany somewhat “primitive” sound on the clarinet—keys clicking, air passing through the instrument colored in various ways—creating the sense of a sonic landscape becoming itself. There is one basic gesture in the piece, moving from hearing pen scratches from inside the paper (from recordings made using contact mics) gradually to the external environment in and outside of the artist’s studio. I am grateful to Alan Wonneberger for technical assistance in making this piece, and to E. Michael Richards for his imaginative work on extended techniques for the clarinet, another important inspiration for the work.
The piece was recorded by E. Michael Richards, and can be heard when viewing the score.
- magnificat 4: Ida Ida (2009)
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Linda Dusman
electroacoustic (2-channel and 5.1 surround available)
ca. 6'15"
magnificat 4: Ida Ida is the final work in my magnificat series, which I began in 2001 around the time of the terrorist attacks in New York City and completed on the eve of the Obama inauguration. The composition reflects back on the darkness of this period in American history amid hope for the future. I quote passages from Gertrude Stein’s novels The Making of Americans and Ida, and include quotations from my own composition An Unsubstantial Territory (Lisa Cella, alto flute, and Jane Rigler, piccolo) to evoke a dreamlike collage of emerging self-awareness. Special thanks to Wendy Salkind, Susan McCully, and Philip Maki, performers, and Alan Wonneberger, who collaborated on the surround mix and was the mastering engineer for the piece.
Click here to listen to the piece.
- magnificat 3: lament (2004)
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Linda Dusman
for violin and electronics
ca. 11'30"
My music in recent years comprises a weaving together of disparate elements. Commissioned by Airi Yoshioka as a work for violin and electronics, I began contemplating magnificat 3 during the US occupation of Iraq, and began composing it as the 17-year cicadas emerged during the spring of 2004, with final revisions in 2005. This composition is the third in a series of works that began as a reflection on the Virgin Mary’s text: “My soul doth magnify the lord,” but which were interrupted by world events beginning with September 1, 2001. I realized that “magnificat 3” was a lament late one night when I was working on the piece and my 8-year-old son woke screaming from a nightmare in which “the war in Iraq came here.” Afterward I realized how much world events had been weighing on me as well. I imagined how much worse, and more frequent, must be the nightmares of the children in Iraq, whose parents cannot shelter them from the constant violence there. “magnificat 3” in the end is a lament for all children who are victims of violence. "magnificat 3" was commissioned by violinist Airi Yoshioka, and recorded by her on New Albany records.
This recording of this piece is by Airi Yoshioka.
- Words Without Words (2006)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for 2-channel tape
ca. 4'30"
The piece explores the parallel world which exists while dreaming, the hidden secrets of the subconscious. We encounter a whole scenery of voices talking in a language full of emotions, feelings, messages--messages which are not clear in the everyday language of the conscious mind but are definitely perceived through other paths. The title was inspired by a short poem of Samuel Beckett “e’coute-les”. The piece is based on vocal samples created mainly by the composer herself, using extended vocal techniques. Source material recorded from performances by the singers Tobias Schlierf and Dora Petridi.
Words without Words was selected for the EBU Ars Acustica 20th anniversary CD.
Click here to listen to the piece.
- MESA sto mesa ("INSIDE the inside") (2006)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for actress, flute, cello, video, and tape
- Mia fora ki enan kero... (Once Upon a Time) (2006)
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Sofia Kamayianni
for cello and tape
- 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.
- Freedom, Sweet and Bitter
-
Anna Rubin
for orchestra and optional fixed media
- Iridium Gone Gold (2015)
-
Patricia Ann Repar
for soprano, alto, tenor, baritone saxophones and digital accompaniment
1 iridium flare: a surge of light
marking the revolution in satellite telecommunication
(wire shattered and adrenals gone mad)
launching us forward to do it faster, spread it further, say it louder, push it harder,
leaving us dark in the night and cold on the ground
like the hard, dense, silvery-white metallic sheen of iridium.
2 iridium flare: a surge of light
marking the call to remember
(even if in the midst of desolation)
the overwhelming vulnerability of clouds reconfiguring, kisses colliding,
and human hearts floundering in the space between life and death
like the deep lustrous yellow of iridium gone gold.
Thanks to Willie Johnson for ‘Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground’, one of the 27 samples of music included on the Voyager Golden Record launched into space in 1977.
Click here to view the performance notes.
Click here to view a performance (YouTube).