Works with Voice
Multi-Instrument Works
Solo Works
Cadenzas (2010) for fluteOn W.A. Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D Major, K. 314, Third Movement
Commissioned by Esther Landau
Score sample – Buy from Disegni Music
Cadenza 1:
Cadenza 2: Esther Landau, Flute; Mill Valley Philharmonic, Laurie Cohen, Artistic Director
Both Shall Row (2010) for piano, 5’Variations on The Water Is Wide
Score sample - Buy from Disegni Music
MIDI realization:
About the Music
I wrote these variations as a wedding gift to my husband, Kevin Garlow, on a folk tune he selected as one of his favorites. I played the piece at our wedding on May 22nd, 2010, in Denver, Colorado.
Commissioned by Peter Josheff
Available from Friedrich Hofmeister
Excerpt 1:
Excerpt 2:
Peter Josheff, clarinet
About the Music
While I was composing Liquid Sings, I was thinking about different pairs of contrasting ideas. The piece is, in part, my attempt to create a musical space for the play between these pairs, some of which include stable/unstable, vocal/instrumental, metered/rhapsodic, chalumeau/clarino, modal/intervallic, and communicative/aphasic. Both local and structural aspects of the piece display these contrasting ideas.
For solo multi-percussion, 5′
Commissioned by The Walden School for Nathan Davis of Non-Sequitur
Excerpt 1:
Excerpt 2:
Nathan Davis, percussion
About the Music
Opa Opá is for a tight solo multi-percussion set up—rainstick, tom-toms, temple blocks, and suspended cymbal. A delicate middle section contrasts with the high-energy outer sections. The piece was written for Nathan Davis of the ensemble Non Sequitur for the Walden School Faculty Commissioning Project in 2000.
For solo clarinet or solo violin, 8′
Works with Voice
don’t show this to no one (2009)For soprano, flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, and cello, 20’, in four movements
Written for soprano Tara Generalovich on texts by Margaret Ronda
don’t show this to no one score sample – Buy from Disegni Music
I. Time (excerpt)
II. Swarm (excerpt)
III. Law (excerpt)
IV. Lost (excerpt)
Tara Generalovich, soprano; Ysmael Reyes, flute/piccolo; Leah Biber, clarinet; Scott Higgins, percussion; Nan Shannon, piano; Rachel Segal, violin; Katherine Knight, cello; Loretta Notareschi, conductor
About the Music
don’t show this to no one is the culmination of a collaboration between Loretta Notareschi, soprano Tara Generalovich, and poet Margaret Ronda. The poetry is from a set Ronda wrote in 2006 called Six Roses: A Song Cycle. The set, while largely abstract, represents the different stages of a woman’s life, from childhood, through adolescence and adulthood, to old age and death. The music for each movement evokes different feelings and sounds associated with each stage of life—the first movement, Time, uses intervals and rhythmic gestures associated with children’s songs (so-called sol-mi songs) while trembling and trilling in childish exuberance. The second movement, Swarm, uses whispering by both the soprano and ensemble to portray the secret-telling intimacy of adolescence. The third movement, Law, shows the severity of a young adult’s self-definition in the strictness of its tempo and clear rhythmic differentiation between the instruments, and the fourth movement, Lost, expresses the anguish of illness in old age through its harmonies and obsessively repeating accompaniment patterns.
For soprano, clarinet, and strings, 15′
Written for sopranist Zachary Gordin
Excerpt:
David Milnes, conductor; Zachary Gordin, sopranist;
Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players
For countertenor or mezzo-soprano and piano, 14′, in four movements
I. your little voice
II. as is the sea
III. there is a moon
IV. if i believe
Sarah Elizabeth Davis, mezzo-soprano
George Cullinan, piano
About the Music
These poems by e.e. cummings, from the set “Amores,” combine images of love and death, an unlikely but instructive juxtaposition. On the surface, they can be read as the narrative of a lover whose loved one has died and who is remembering both the physical and spiritual aspects of his love. But symbolically they can be seen as a person’s understanding of death through or because of the act of loving, as testament to the fact that we never feel our own mortality more than when we are in love. Along with this love/death juxtaposition is another juxtaposition: that of the cosmos (stars, moon, darkness, heavens, god, soul) and the earth (flowers, waters, petals, sea, city). Throughout the set, these images create an extended metaphor for the mystery of finding the sacred amidst the profane.
Multi-Instrument Works
Two About Two (2010)For oboe and guitar, 5’
Commissioned by the Mountain Music Duo
The Mountain Music Duo: Tenly Williams, oboe; James Cline, guitar
About the Music
Two About Two gets its tile from the fact that it is two instruments expressing two main different ideas: A and B. The A idea is lyrical and chorale-like, and the B idea is jazzier and more angular. A is presented ultimately in two different keys. In the second key (D minor, at the end), it is presented in two different ways: backwards and upside down. B is presented in two ways also: with blues-scale-influenced materials and with more atonal materials. A and B influence one another throughout the piece.
For violin and piano, 8’, in two movements
Commissioned by the Colorado State Music Teachers Association
Duo Movement 1:
Duo Movement 2:
Rebekah Durham, violin
Nan Shannon, piano
About the Music
Duo is dedicated to the Colorado State Music Teachers Association. Rebekah Durham, violinist, and Nan Shannon, pianist, premiered the work in June 2009 in Northglenn, Colorado.
For erhu and pipa, 8’
Commissioned by The Walden School for Melody of China From the Inside (2006)
For oboe, 4 violins, and cello, 9′, in two movements
Commissioned by the Community Music Center of San Francisco
I. Opening
II. Breaking Open
Sarah Rathke, oboe; Karen Shinozaki, David Ryther, Cynthia Mei, Rita Lee, violins; Leighton Fong, cello
About the Music
From the Inside was a joint commission from the American Composers Forum and the Community Music Center of San Francisco. It was created during the 2005 to 2006 season during a residency called New Music for People to Play. This residency brought together local composers with amateur chamber music players from all over the San Francisco Bay Area. The piece is gratefully dedicated to Loretta Taylor, Max Mathews, Dana Perrigan, Brynn Dirksen, Juliet Shackell, and Ingrid Linn, who generously welcomed the composer into their Saturday morning rehearsals and showed an incredible spirit of adventure as From the Inside was created and rehearsed.
For saxophone quartet, 7′
Commissioned by The Walden School for the PRISM Saxophone Quartet
Available from Friedrich Hofmeister
Excerpt 1:
Excerpt 2:
The Premiere Saxophone Quartet
Dale Wolford, soprano saxophone
Kevin Stewart, alto saxophone
David Henderson, tenor saxophone
Aaron Lington, baritone saxophone
About the Music
Dimwit’s Delight is an impish piece of the sort of dopey humor one associates with dimwits, dunderpates, and dingbats alike. In its use of typical saxophone “extended techniques” and stereotypical frenetic gestures, it is extravagantly clichéd. Each change of character displays another side of the dear dimwit’s nature. Even he has his witty moments, as well as his grooving, sneaky, ugly, and brazen ones.
Formally, the piece is in three main sections. In the first, a stuttering set of rhythms gradually gives way to a driving groove, supported by a structure of isolated interval groupings. Throughout the section, more and more textural, rhythmic, and harmonic gestures accumulate, creating two successive climaxes—one little and one big. The second section displays a deliberate ugliness, an inharmonicity achieved through growls, glissandi, altissimo pitches, and quarter tone tunings. After this section sputters out, the third rebuilds a structure reminiscent of that of the opening, piling on new sets of interval groupings and new rhythmic and textural gestures until the piece collapses under its own weight.
On Those Nights (2005)For brass quintet, 6′, in two movements
Commissioned by the Rivers Music School
I. At Daybreak
II. The Distance of the Moon
Rivers Music School Brass Ensemble, Dan Shaud, Director
About the Music
On Those Nights takes its inspiration from several striking passages in Italo Calvino’s marvelous book of fables, the Cosmicomics. It was composed for the Weston, MA Rivers Music School Brass Ensemble and their director Dan Shaud, to whom it is gratefully dedicated.
For flute and piano, 10′, in two movements
Commissioned by The Walden School for the Calliope Duo
Savor Mov’t 1 Sample Score Pages – Savor Mov’t 2 Sample Score Pages
Buy from Disegni Music
Excerpt:
The Calliope Duo: Elizabeth McNutt, flute and Shannon Wettstein, piano
This Is It (2003)For percussion duo (marimba, dumbek, tambourines), 8′
Commissioned by Peter McBurney for Joseph Gramley and Yousif Sheronick
Available from Bachovich
Excerpt, MIDI realization:
A Muse Remembered (2003)
For viola, guitar, percussion, and bassoon, 6′
Commissioned by The Walden School for Clogs
Clogs
Moon Jazz: River on the Moon (1999)For flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and contrabass, 5′
Sample Score Pages – Buy from Disegni Music
Ensemble Eleven
