feather, breath, mirror Due (Cinta)mani (2002) for piano and fixed media 7:15 Vicki Ray, piano I. Three Symbolic Gestures 4:26 II. Cloudbands 2:49 Recorded March 2005 at Slosberg Music Center, Brandeis University. Brad Michael, engineer Eric Chasalow, producer Due (Cinta)mani (2002) is a piece for piano soloist (due mani) combined with electronic sounds that modulate and transform the piano timbres, the attack and decay characteristics, and the shapes of entire gestures or even whole phrases. I wanted to write a very economical piece where every note would count and every electronic sound would be an essential, integrated part of the phrase. The use of electronics also gave me two capabilities not otherwise available to the piano – microtones and portimenti. The piano starts with a single pitch D, but played as an harmonic, giving it a pure, unpianistic sound. The melodies then fan out from this D, but the D itself is repeated over and over, each time with a different mode of articulation, a change in color, and/or a change in tuning. The origin of the cintamani pattern, three flaming pearls placed over sea waves, is uncertain, but it most likely has an ancient Buddhist origin. The lines representing the waves might instead connote tiger stripes or clouds. Cintamani appear frequently in the decorative arts of China, India, and the Ottoman Empire, most often in textiles, carpets and ceramics. I have chosen the word for my title because of its iconographic power and mystery – also because of a personal interest in Asian art and culture. The piece is in two movements, each based on the same harmonic material: Three Symbolic Gestures and Cloudbands. Due (Cinta)mani was commissioned by Vicki Ray and is dedicated to her. Flute Concerto: three love poems (2005) for flute and chamber ensemble 13:01 Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor Tara Helen O’Connor, flute Alan Kay, clarinet; Curtis Macomber, violin Fred Sherry, ‘cello Tom Kolor, percussion Stephen Gosling, piano I. flight and confession 5:38 II. eggshell, more like a heart 2:51 III. feather, breath, mirror 4:42 Recorded September 2010 at SUNY Purchase. Adam Abeshouse, engineer and producer Flute Concerto (2005) The score carries the following dedication: “For the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky.” In college I began to play the flute seriously, eventually studying with Harvey Sollberger at Columbia. In looking ahead to my 50th birthday, a consortium of flutist friends came together to commission a new concerto. Susan Gall, Tara Helen O’Connor, Rachel Rudich, Patricia Spencer, and Dorothy Stone had each performed my music over the years, and I was honored to create a new work with each of them in mind. Rather than composing for flute and orchestra, I decided to write a flute “chamber concerto” – a practical arrangement for the classic new music ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and piano. One evening, just before Dorothy Stone gave her premiere with the California EAR Unit, the entire ensemble called me up to say that their concert would be on Valentine’s Day and to ask if I could please change the title to something more “thematic.” While they did not push too hard, they had always been wonderful champions of my music, and besides, Flute Concerto is an awfully boring title. I appended the subtitle “three love poems.” Trois Espaces du Son (2004) for piano, percussion and fixed media 11:04 Ancuza Aprodu, piano Thierry Miroglio, percussion I. Dramatic, deliberate 3:21 II. Driven, with energy 2:52 III. Meditative and resonant 4:51 Recorded March 2009 at Slosberg Music Center, Brandeis University. Brad Michael, engineer Eric Chasalow producer In writing Trois Espaces du Son, (dedicated to Thierry Miroglio and Ancuza Aprodu) I wanted to make a less contrapuntal, simpler music than I had in the past. As each sonority breaths, its color and harmony shifts, sometimes by subtle changes of spectrum that allow new chords to emerge, sometimes through more obvious timbre modulation or portamenti. These changes do more than create progressions of timbre and harmony— they change the space inhabited by the instruments over time too. The piece is in three movements – slow, faster, slow. The slow movements each emphasize resonance differently. Movement one opens with a declamatory fanfare of arpeggios, followed by simple melodic lines that change color, in part, by leaping in register. Movement three, in contrast, consists mostly of a rather static, slow chord progression with ever lengthening spaces between attacks. As the instruments simply repeat slightly revoiced chords many times, the electronic sounds change the perceived harmony. In movements one and three the percussionist is limited to only two metal instruments – vibraphone and crotales – both of which are capable of producing long decays. In the second movement the percussionist plays entirely inside the piano, changing the attacks and decays of each sonority as it is set in vibration by the pianist. Horn Concerto (2008) for horn and chamber orchestra 15:35 Gil Rose, Conductor Bruno Schneider, horn solo Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) I. Lively, always pushing forward 2:56 II. Meditative, a long expanding breath 4:08 11 III. Distant 4:00 IV. Moving by angle and accent 4:31 Recorded January 2012 at WGBH-Boston Fraser Performance Studio. Antonio Oliart, engineer Eric Chasalow, producer Peter Van Zandt Lane, assistant producer Horn Concerto (2008) I love the horn, and have a long family association with it. My sister, Suzanne is a professional horn player, and the great Swiss horn player, Bruno Schneider is like a brother. The Chasalow family became close to the Schneider family in the 1970’s when Bruno’s brother, Rémi spent a year with us as an exchange student. One of my early pieces, Verses & Fragments (1979), is scored for horn, percussion and tape and was written with both my sister and Bruno in mind. In 1989 Bruno commissioned a virtuosic solo piece, Winding Up that he recorded for my 1993 New World Records release. The character of my Horn Concerto was inspired by Bruno’s playing, which is very precise, elegant and expressive. In this piece I have mixed up some of the traditional concerto elements to create dramatic surprises. There is a cadenza, but it is too short and in the wrong place. There is scherzo- like music, but uncharacteristically, it appears in the first movement. Also, there are two, linked slow movements instead of one. Throughout movement one, the soloist is allowed to play only one pitch – A. The idea for this came about organically in the composing. I do remember writing a big noisy beginning utti and thinking that, after all that sound, if the horn were to play just one lonely note all by itself, very deliberately, it would be very funny. It would keep the listener waiting for something else and make the next event matter a lot. I kept delaying the pitch change to see how far I could push the idea. With each delay, the stakes became higher. I did not want to waste the moment where the horn changes pitch, so I pushed it all the way to the end of the movement, making an upbeat to the second movement. In the second movement the horn slowly starts to find its voice, gradually adding other pitches to create a tune. The end of the second movement speeds up into a kind of short horn cadenza that is very upbeat. At that point we might anticipate a fast movement -- a 6/8 rondo perhaps. Instead, an even slower movement, the third, intervenes. Now the horn has found its voice and “sings” a slow aria against very simple string resonances. The tune here is more of a “proto-melody” - the distilled essence of a rather disembodied song. Movement four is fast, angular, and syncopated. About two thirds through, we get a literal recapitulation of the tutti that started movement one. The horn once again plays its one pitch, but this time with more energy, and it eventually breaks free of the stuck note, which is very exhilarating. Rather than ending big, as one might now expect, there is a sudden shift to a slower tempo and the horn ends virtually alone, playing a fragile tonal melody.