Too Late in the Evening by Chris Cresswell
SPLICE Festival Institute 2023
Hüzün Nar: The Gorgon Cycles by Tessa Brinkman
version for alto flute + fixed audio + video
Human Nature at Manhattan School of Music
The words "hüzün" and "nar" in the title - which mean "melancholy" and "fire" in Turkish and Arabic respectively - are a nod to Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and his memoir of his beloved city Istanbul, to which I travelled in 2011. This piece was inspired by city- wide calls to prayer, Turkish TV music shows, electronic dance music booming all night in the Old City, traditional Ottoman and Indian forms, and the later protests in Taksim Square. The score has room for improvisatory elements and moves rhythmically in cycles of 22. The fixed audio uses processed alto flute, prepared piano and electronic patches. Hüzün Nar is also the soundtrack for the animation film, The Gorgon Cycles (2023) , and a score is available to perform live, with or without the animation.
The short animation film, The Gorgon Cycles (2023),was directed and created by composer Tessa Brinckman and animators Miles Inada and Devyn McConachie. It is a fever dream - an intricately layered animation invoking the return of the long-banished visionary, Medusa. Built as a complete film experience, based around the original score Hüzün Nar for flute and electronica, with a supporting cast of fish, snakes, dinosaurs, a cat, a monkey and a magician, The Gorgon Cycles is a statement of violent optimism - a contemplation of life amongst global catastrophe.
—Tessa Brinckman
I will not be sad in this world by Eve Beglarian
Human Nature at Manhattan School of Music
Originally written for alto (or bass) flute, I will not be sad in this world is based on the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova’s song Ashkharumes Akh Chim Kashil. The piece is often played on the duduk, and your flute playing should respond to the ornamentation, intonation, and vibrato of traditional duduk playing.
I will not be sad in this world is part of my ongoing project, A Book of Days. You can listen to Tim Munro’s live recording by visiting June 28th. There are several studio recordings available, including those by Marya Martin, Manuel Zurria, and Claudia Anderson.
Thanks to Marya Martin who commissioned the piece for the Flute Book for the 21st Century. You can purchase the performance materials here. Many thanks to my dear friend and colleague Margaret Lancaster, who tried out the piece for me and advised me about notation. Thanks also to the Civitella Ranieri Foundation who were my generous hosts while I was writing I will not be sad in this world.
—Eve Beglarian
Among Fireflies by Elainie Lillios
Human Nature at Manhattan School of Music
Among Fireflies (2010) for alto flute and live, interactive electroacoustics takes its inspiration from a haiku by poet Wally Swist who generously granted permission to use it for the piece:
Dense with fireflies The field flickers Through the fog!1
Swist’s imagery inspired me to consider texture and perspective, which became two focal aspects of the piece. The piece’s opening gestures place the performer in a field surrounded by a multitude of fireflies – perhaps the performer is a person, or perhaps the performer is a firefly him/herself. The piece’s progression slowly separates the performer (and listeners) from the masses of fireflies, the increasing distance changing our perspective on their activity and brilliance. By the piece’s end, we view the fireflies through the fog from a great distance, where only the smallest, blurred flickers persist, but the memory of their presence remains. Among Fireflies was commissioned by the Lipa Festival of Contemporary Music at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
— Elainie Lillios
Farewell Feathered Friends by Jacob TV
Human Nature at Manhattan School of Music
Farewell Feathered Friends for piccolo and soundtrack was composed April 2020 and dedicated to Ilonka Kolthof.
Farewell Feathered Friends is a dialogue for piccolo and 5 endangered birds and was composed during the Covid-19 lock down at the initiative of Heather Pinkham, who invited 12 composers to write a small piece for 12 individual musicians under the umbrella of 'Music for Empty Spaces'. The world premiere will take place May 28, 2020, at the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw, including livestreaming.
—Jacob TV
George Crumb - Vox balaenae Voice of the Whale 1971
Human Nature at Manhattan School of Music
Vox Balaenae, or Voice of the Whale was inspired by the 1969 recording of the humpback whale singing. This piece was originally intended to use masks and lighting to dehumanize the projection of nature and amplification of the instruments so the audience can hear the extended techniques used to mimic the whale sounds.
The opening Vocalise (…for the beginning of time) is a flute solo that incorporates a cadenza of singing into the flute to imitate whale songs and ends with an Also sprach Zarathustra quote from A Space Odyssey.
The next movement consists of Variations on Sea-Time [Sea Theme]. This movement is consisting of harmonics in the cello and an “aeolian harp” effect in the piano. The first variation is titled Archeozoic and refers to ‘the age of unicellular life’ or bacteria – when oxygen was only in the water. The cello glides along the finger board to create the “seagull effect” and the pianist uses a chisel to glide along the piano strings. Proterozoic [Var. II] uses a paper clip in the piano and slow lines attempting to reach above to signify this crucial development of life when oxygen was found in the air and cellular life started to appear on land. The third variation, or Paleozoic, is a depiction of the oldest animals on earth – those of the sea. The alternating harmonics quintuplets passed through all the instruments depict the weaving motion of fish swimming through water. Mesozoic [Var. IV] is the age of complex life on land – the dinosaurs! The noble, broad melodic octaves played by the cello and flute are contrasted by the “jangling” glass rod placed in the piano’s counter melody. The final Variation is Cenozoic, which represents the age after the extinction of the dinosaurs and the dominance of mammals, including humans. Crumb uses each instrument individually, representing the individualistic nature of human existence. This movement ends with a recollection of motifs from the beginning of time and ends with whistling, foreshadowing the end of time.
Sea-Nocturn (…for the end of time) begins with a whistling duet between the flutist and the cellist while the pedal is down in the piano. This serene melody is based on the first three notes in the cello in the last movement. This haunting ending gives the listener shimmery textures, noble, soaring melodic duet in the flute and cello, and a gentle dying away until nothing exists.
—Savannah Gentry
Pell-Mell by Bobby Ge
Tactus Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music
The first half of 2021 proved to be surprisingly fast-paced - if not in locomotion (most of my time has still been spent locked in my room), then certainly in terms of news cycles and workload. For several months, I found myself fretting about what crazy event would trigger the next wave of headline-addled social media rants - riots, mass shootings, record temperatures, collapsing buildings - all while composing furiously, trying desperately to meet deadline after deadline. As each submission date began to feel less reasonable than the last, some of that frenzied, nervous activity began to creep into the music i was writing. I noticed that many of my pieces were becoming increasingly pulse-driven, filled with wild mixed meters and rapid modulations.
Pell-Mell continues that trend, collapsing so many months of frenetic energy into a five minute long mad dash. I wanted to try and compress my usual processes as compactly as possible, building the piece out of two ideas - an oscillating sixteenth note motif, and an off-kilter 4/4+3/4 rhythm. As the flute blazes through double-tongued barrages of notes over viciious bass clarinet multiphonics, the two motifs play against one another through constant stepwise modulations. The piece ultimately captures a mute of my mental state in its large-scale form - a continuous Shepard tone ascending to nowhere, perpetually heightening in tension while never quite breaking.
— Bobby Ge
Fragments of Glass by Matthew Taylor
Tactus Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music
Fragments of Glass is an improvised piece for voice and varied ensemble. It is a surrealist statement on introspection and the repercussions from the journey inside. This piece should be handled with a sense of humor mixed with angst. The vocalist recites/sigs the poem while the accompanying ensemble interjects with phrases and syllables extracted from the poem.
— Matthew Taylor
Scrivo in Vento by Elliot Carter
Tactus Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music
SCRIVO IN VENTO for flute alone, dedicated to the wonderful flutist and friend, Robert Aitken, takes its title from a peopl of Petrarch who lived in and around Avignon from 1326 to 1353. It uses the flute to present contrasting musical ideas and registers to suggest the paradoxical nature of the poem.
It was fist performed July 20, 1991, (coincidentally on Petrarch’s 687th birthday) at the XVIIIe Rencontres de la Chartreuse of the Centre Acanthes devoted to my music at the festival of Avignon, France, by Robert Aitken
— E.C.
Eight Songs for a Mad King by Maxwell Davies
Tactus Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music
Maroon by Fang Man
Tactus Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music
Eight Songs for a Mad King by Maxwell Davies
Tactus Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music
When Dandelion Whistles by Shuyu Lin
Premiered at the SPLICE festival at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI.
A few words about When Dandelion Whistles… The main inspiration is from the imagination of flying dandelion seeds. The sound played by flute is the main dandelion, triggering the electronic music, which is the flying dandelion seeds. The electronic music also includes two important elements: flipping paper and rain sound, met aphorizing the dandelion as not from the real world but a rainy scene in a book of tales.
— Shuyu Lin
Sleep’s Undulating Tide by Elainie Lillios
Persisting Sound’s opening concert at The Old Church in Portland, OR.
Sleep’s Undulating Tide takes its inspiration from Margaret Atwood’s poem “ Variations on the Word Sleep.” Her expressive text reveals desire, intimacy, and longing — “ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark waves slides over my head.” Atwood’s imagery progresses through a dream-like state where she desires to accompany her lover through the beauty of a “lucent wavering forest of blue green leaves” and then into a foreboding darkness “towards the cave where you must descend, toward your worst fear.” Her continuing journey references Orpheus’s descent into hell to rescue Eurydice by yearning to “become the boat that would row you back carefully.” Atwood’s evocative poem ends with a simple yet profound expression to “ be the air that inhabits you for a moment only”, with its intent to be simultaneously unimportant yet vital.
— Elaine Lillios
East Wind by Shulamit Ran
Persisting Sound’s opening concert at The Old Church in Portland, OR.
Both Ran’s East Wind and the Biblical'“east wind' imply this juxtaposition of tragedy and epic content. In the Bible, the east wind first appears in the Book of Genesis as the subject of the Pharaoh’s premonition dream. In the Book of Exodus, this premonition is realized as the powerful east wind brings the plague of locusts and parts the Red Sea. Ran’s East Wind exploits the full range of the flute (B3-D#7), employs extended techniques such as pitch bends, key clicks, and the percussive 'spit tongue' articulation, and contains complex, non-metered rhythms with angular melodies that push the technical capabilities of the performer."
—Amanda Cook; Between the Ledger Lines.
In Contrast, Movement II by Rebecca Larkin
Recorded at the Youtube Studios with ‘The Studio’ by Project Trio with Rebecca Larkin, Emily Kaplan, and Simona Donova