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.

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

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 view the score.

Click here to listen to a recording.

Anna Rubin

for soprano/mezzo soprano and piano

Night of Nights/Nacht der Nächte (composed in 1998, rev. 2020)

So Many Oceans (composed in 2021)

White Serpent/Weiss Schlange (composed in 2022)

German Jewish poet and Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs created a unique body of work commemorating the Holocaust. She and her mother managed to flee Germany on the last flight allowed out of Germany to Sweden and lived there for the rest of her life.

In Night of Nights/Nacht der Nächte, Sachs manages in a few lines to express an enormous depth of loss and desolation with the hope of eventual redemption. I have made my own translation of the poem and included some German from the poem because of the unique vividness of the poet’s language. The musical language of the piece veers towards and away tonality and exploits many pianistic colors. Julia Fox, soprano, and Sandrine Erdely-Sayo premiered Night of Nights at the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona, in 2021.

White Serpent/Weisse Schlange contains a wild conflation of images – emptiness and the anger of a grenade, fire, and ice along with the strange images of a white snake and ice. All these images roll into the final image of time and eternity on the back of a snail. The relentless quality of that last image governs the pulse that governs the piece, against which brief melodies flare.

Click here to view the score for Night of Nights (English).

Click here to view the score for the Nacht der Nächte (German).

Click here to watch a YouTube video of the performance of Night of Nights.

Click here to view the score for So Many Oceans.

Click here to view the score for White Serpent (English).

Click here to view the score for Weisse Schlange (German).

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for mezzo soprano and piano

ca. 5'05"

The text of Dudele is attributed to Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740–1809) who was a prominent Chasidic rabbi in what is present- day Ukraine. The Chasidic sect of Judaism emphasizes joy, music, and mystical union with God. Dudeleh is a beloved Yiddish poem. Yiddish is strongly related to medieval German with a great deal of Hebrew, and spoken widely by Eastern European Jews and now in Chasidic communities throughout the world as well as by secular Jews. Du is the familiar form of ‘you’ and Dudele is an affectionate intensification of the pronoun, that would be used with a beloved spouse, child or friend – here it affirms the Reb’s intense connection to God.

I set the poem/prayer with a Klezmer feel. While most of the piece is in 4/4, there are interludes using a rhythm of 3+3+2 which is heard in the doina, a Rumanian dance form with possible Middle Eastern roots, often heard in Klezmer music.

Dudele is part of a larger composition originally scored for SATB choir, harp, organ and percussion called Hallelujah. This version of Dudele was premiered at the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona in 2023, on the same day that Hallelujah premiered in Schermbeck, Germany.

Sonja Bruzauskas, mezzo soprano

Sandrine Erdely-Sayo, piano

Click here to view the score.

Click here to watch a performance of the piece.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for mezzo soprano, piano, and fixed media

ca. 14'56"

Remembering is a lyrical and evocative meditation on the horrors of World War II. It is in three major sections. The two outer sections are accompanied by electronic sounds. The first part is dominated by word fragments which are gradually revealed to be names of concentration camps and other sites of horror. The middle section is without electronic sounds and is a setting of the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish and is in the original Hebrew. The last section again features a collage of vocal sounds as a background for the soloist and brings a gentle resolution to the work.

The work has been recorded on NEUMA Records with the late Judith Kellock, mezzo soprano, and Karl Paulnack.It has been performed many times including performances at the SEAMUS Festival of Electroacoustic Music (1996), Oberlin College (2000), University of Maryland Baltimore County (2010), and the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona (2021).

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Rahilia Hasanova

for mezzo soprano and piano

ca. 5'55"

Also titled "Three Gazelles," this is a vocal cycle for mezzo soprano, with lyrics by Samed Vurgun.

     Her bagin, her bagchanin...

     Alemin seyrine gel...

     Elimin vurgunayam...

Click here to view the score.

Mercedes Otero

for mezzo soprano, flute, oboe, harp, and contrabass

ca. 16'15"

The poems used in “De Laguna” are from the book Laguna, by Alberto Arvelo Ramos, a contemporary Venezuelan poet. Translations by Mercedes Otero. 

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