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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 view the score and listen to a recording. 

Sofia Kamayianni

for actress, flute, cello, video, and tape

Click here to view the score.

Sofia Kamayianni

for cello and tape

Mia fora ki enan kero... is an abstract story that gives space to the imagination of the audience. 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 view the score.

Click here to watch a video of the performance.

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 view the score.

Click here to listen on Annea Lockwood's website. 

Anna Rubin

for fixed media and Baroque oboe, modern oboe, or violin

ca. 5'30"

Stolen Gold, for amplified baroque oboe (or modern oboe or violin), live electronics, and digital audio is a one-movement piece. The digital audio portion was created in the Csound synthesis program and uses three classes of sounds – glissandi varying in character from subtle to long and sweeping, clouds of pointillistic sounds, and drones. The oboe weaves sinuous and melismatic melodies around these events as well as emulating some of the synthesized glissandi. Amplification of the live instrument allows it to blend with the digital audio. The harmonic language of the piece is freely atonal and based on a variety of invented modes. The oboe/violin and the synthesized sound alternate in prominence, continually shifting in whether one or the other is more dominant. At other times they seem to meld, only to suddenly deviate. The title has a two-fold personal meaning – at the time of first learning Csound, a complex Unix-based application, I struggled to find an expressive outlet through the rigors of its program language. Achieving compelling sounds felt like a triumph of both will and wilyness, as if I had stolen the treasure from a heartless machine.

The baroque oboe version of this piece has been recorded on Capstone Records (Debra Nagy) and the violin version has been recorded on Albany Records (Airi Yoshioka). The performer for the modern oboe version is Patricia Morehead. The piece has been performed many times including at the Ohio Composers of Electroacoustic Music Festival, Oberlin (2002), and the NYC International Fringe Festival (as music for Colette Searls’ puppet production, Basura, 2005). It has been featured at such festivals as the Festival de la Cité Lausanne, 2012, the Scotia Music Festival, Halifax, 2013, and as presented by "der/gelbe/klang" Ensemble, Munich (2024).

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording of the version for Baroque oboe.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording of the version for modern oboe.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording of the version for violin.

Click here to download performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for amplified cello and fixed media

ca. 10'54"

Beekeepers Caroline and Jeff Crooks are small-scale beekeepers in Maryland who graciously allowed me to record their stories about beekeeping – as well as their bees. Their recorded voices are blended with ambient and computer-generated sound and blended with live cello. This sonic ‘portrait’ takes the listener into the world of a backyard apiary, and is part of a series of pieces commissioned by cellist Madeleine Shapiro dealing with the environment. The cellist’s part is both lyrical and percussive, allowing the performer to explore a variety of textures and colors available on the instrument.

This piece has been performed at such venues as The Tank (NYC, 2011), Electroacousic Music Festival, Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (2013), SEAMUS Conference, Wesleyan University (2014), and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2018).

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording by Michal Schmidt.

Click here to download performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for orchestra and optional fixed media/backing soundtrack

This orchestra piece was a winner of the National Orchestral Association competition and was  performed under the baton of Jorge Mester at Carnegie Hall in 1989. Textural variety is a strong feature of the piece with contrasting wind, string and brass passages. The mood of the piece is poignant and was inspired by the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. My dear friend, composer Violeta Dinescu, told me much about the repression of his regime and the great hopes of the Romanian people. But his downfall did not usher in the freedom and prosperity promised. The piece premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1993 under the direction of Jorge Mester.

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

 Patricia Ann Repar

 fixed media

ten’der1 n. (esp.) 1. Small ship in attendance upon a larger one to supply her with stores, guide her through shallow waters, and convey orders and directions. Strategically located within oneself yet inexplicably difficult to find.

Special thanks to percussionist Courtney Lurie and songwriters Gross and Lawrence for their tune Tenderly (1955).

Click here to here a recording of this piece.

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 score.

Click here to view the performance notes.

Click here to view a performance (YouTube).