P   A   R   T       I

Mike McFerron - Canotila: Stretching toward the sky
Von Hansen, claves

Canotila, according to Lokota Native American lore, are spirits that live in trees.  

Jewel Dirks - Egon The Little Goat Takes Control

I'm always delighted with the uniqueness of non-human performances:  Exact rhythms, precision speed, unique sounds, swirling around the ears...while still appealing to the human sensitibility of surprise and joy.  My field recordings of rock sounds form the beginning and ending sections.  The toy cymbal is in the middle, entering in reverse as a crescendo that starts imperceptibly.  The melody comes from a looped portion of the rock click.  Egon is a little goat that came to live on our farm with that has much larger goats, but he quickly gained control.  They don't have horns, and he does.

Leah Reid - Single Fish

Nief-Norf 2019 Vocal Ensemble: Sarah Grace Graves, Mikeila McQueston, Elena Stabile - soprano;
Kerry O'Brien, coach, Andrew Bliss, artistic director

Single Fish is an aphoristic composition for three sopranos and hand percussion. The work explores the sounds and rhythms present inside Gertrude Stein's poem 'Single Fish' from "Tender Buttons." The piece is divided into four sections, each examining a subset of the text. The singers are directed to explore a vast repertoire of theatrical characters and singing styles. The composition begins with delicate whispered and spoken phonetic textures and slowly incorporates pitched material: ranging from honky-tonk piano imitations to lush melodic lines.

Alan Goldspiel - Mountains Beyond Clouds

Brittney Patterson, bass flute; Alan Goldspiel, guitar
1. Autumn Winds Whisper, 2. Gentle Rain Falling, 3. In a Sea of Stars, 4. The Time for Closure

Inspired by Haiku and its traditional syllable patterns of five and seven, Mountains Beyond Clouds portrays aspects of nature as a series of short movements with descriptive titles. The fives and sevens manifest in rhythmic patterns, meter, and melodic groupings or sets. The closure or caesura is a final movement signifying all things come to an end.

Indigo Knecht - stitches upon stitches
stitches upon stitches is a work for fixed media. As an electroacoustic composer, one of my favorite mediums to work in is fixed media, utilizing field recordings and my own recorded performances. Based on my most treasured textile, my baby blanket, I envisioned the work as a tapestry of my struggles from childhood to the present.  As I look at my blanket, I can't help but focus on all the tears and damage accumulated over the years. There are stitches upon stitches from where my child self attempted to sew and patch the rips in the blanket. While it is an item I treasure dearly. I kept it with me for years, slept with it every night as a kid, and even brought it with me after moving out of my family's home; I still imagine the trauma I faced as a child through the years of wear upon the fabric. To me, this blanket is my biography of my 25 years of existence.

Dalton H. Regnier - the bat flies at sunset

Dalton H. Regnier, clarinet

One of the several unique things about Gainesville, Florida, where I relocated for my doctorate, are what's known as the Bat Houses. These structures on the outskirts of campus hold several bats, which emerge out of the houses during a 15-20 minute period after sunset. Due to the constant nature of the bats emerging from the houses, it has become somewhat of a tourist attraction and is something that nearly every local will see during their time in Gainesville. This piece is loosely inspired by the daily flights of these bats, with chilling multiphonics to add a mysterious texture, as well as playful motivic fragments and sweeping technical passages representing the bat taking flight. 

Anthony Esland - Marimba Movie

George Barton, marimba; Siwan Rhys, piano

Marimba Movie is a single-movement concerto, originally composed in 2009 for marimba and woodwind ensemble and later arranged for marimba and piano. It's an exuberant piece in a broadly ABA structure, with rapid outer sections and a slower, mellower central part. The main theme reappears in various guises throughout, and the contrapuntal nature of the work creates a continuous dialogue between the instruments. This recording features George Barton on marimba and Siwan Rhys on piano and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2019.

Dinah Bianchi - Illumine Divergence

Kayla Noelle, flute; Robert Conway, piano
In dedication to her daughter and flutist, Kayla Noelle, this piece was commissioned by Jacqueline Fornari to commemorate the completion of Kayla’s M.M. Degree from UNCSA. While creating this work, Bianchi focused on infusing the music with ambient sounds, rich harmonic language, extended techniques, and beautiful melodies that would highlight the many facets of flute performance. It was her ambition to create music that would showcase a high level of artistry and craft, while evoking the essence of change and growth through a type of reflective evolution. As this work celebrates new uncharted beginnings, the title, Illumine Divergence, seemed apropos to her as illumine means: to illuminate; or to light the path; to hold a hopeful connotation, while divergence depicts the change or metamorphosis within the change. Bianchi felt it was imperative to emphasize the beauty of change and progression not only present within the music, but to overtly symbolize the connection of the progression of time and achievements with accomplishments and events yet to be discovered, hence concluding the work with a sense of lingering mystery.

David Peoples - Prelude.Unreal.Jam.Latin.Scat
Kleidi B, voice; David Peoples, piano and percussion

In this newly composed work, a jazz vocalist, pianist, and percussionist perform with live processing. There are elements of fixed notation and improvisation. The work is set in three movements. Prelude: voice and agogo with delays sets the mood for a calming space. Unreal: realness is there to trigger and interact (drum machines, live percussion, synthesizers, and the scatting talents of the vocalist). Jam: ends it all with a broken jam session.

P   A   R   T       II
Qingye Wu - Time and Space
Qingye Wu, piano
Time and Space is a piece written for electronic and acoustic piano. The piece is inspired by the feeling of contemplation during the silent night-time. I imagined myself standing alone in an empty field, starring at the endless dark sky full of stars, taking journeys in time: the past, this moment, and the future. Being like an observer, while the time changes, the scenes and the feelings in my memory come in and out, just like the waves of the sea.

Michael Boyd - invasion/symbiosis (III)
invasion/symbiosis (III) is an opportunity to Create A Gem of an Electro-acoustic work. One begins realizing this work by recording sounds in and around their home including, but not limited to, automobile traffic, 'nature' and mushrooms cooking. Nearly all aspects of how these recordings are edited and arranged are governed by chance operations. The individual realizing the piece is instructed to not modify sounds (instead accept them as they are), and to not fear silence. This work is featured on the SEAMUS Electroacoustic Miniatures 2012: Re-Caged recording; this version is a different, slightly longer realization of the work.

Richard Montalto - November Song

Sheri Falcone, clarinet
In 1987, I composed a work for unaccompanied trumpet, Autumn Song. Many years later I decided to revise the work. An electronic accompaniment was created and various changes were made to take advantage of the performance capabilities of the clarinet. The result is the current work, now renamed November Song. The accompaniment comprises a digital manipulation of a recording of the clarinet part.

Alex Shapira - Tough Love

Ben Gimm, Sequoia - piano
Alex completed this work in September 2022. It evokes an awkward conversation between generations with different ideals and approaches to life. Can love and understanding coexist with the tensions, the stress and even anger, which are amplified by not really listening to each other? Can we disagree, but still respect each other, and even have fun together? At least once in a while? Alex used polytonal elements to create the sensation of 'not being on the same page' and to add color to this generational dialogue, that doesn't allow a dull moment. In addition, dramatic accents and polyrhythms diverge, creating grotesque effects at times. Unlike other works for two pianos, where matching is emphasized, differentiation is more important in this case, and can be achieved by selecting performers with different backgrounds or performing styles.

Robert Fleisher - Parallel

This recorded artifact from 1968 was first heard (backwards) on the reverse side of its 7-inch tape reel. Judicious editing in 2021 (reducing the original duration by roughly one third) preceded its 2022 premiere during the third annual Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Earth Day Art Model international telematic festival. In 2023, Parallel was heard during the VU3 Symposium (Park City, UT) and more than a dozen NACUSA events in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. Most recently, Parallel was selected for the 40th SEAMUS conference (2024), where it was heard during the "Living Room Music" session at NYU's Music and Research Laboratory in Brooklyn. The title alludes to both the "negative image" of music heard backwards and the composer's evident fondness for archaic voice leading in his youth.

David Peoples - In Memory of Joe Alexander
Joe Alexander, narrator

Joe Alexander was a lifelong member of NACUSA and one of the first members of the Sounds New chapter - and was present at our first mobile installation in Mississippi. The last time I saw Joe, he was working his tail off to host a concert at MUW. Regrettably, he passed shortly after that concert. This memorial piece is a soundscape using a voicemail from Joe to the composer and a ton of delays and other electronic processing.

Greg A Steinke - DON’T WE (Image Music VII)
Roger Cole, clarinet in A
This is a short unaccompanied work originally written for inclusion in the clarinet anthology, ETUDES for the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CLARINETIST Project, (A Festschrift for the 64th Birthday of Barney Childs) commissioned by Phillip Rehfeldt. The listener should just enjoy contemplating “... there are no such things as ....”

Ursula Kwong-Brown - Emerald Meditations
Hrabba Atladottir, violin I; Dan Flanagan, violin II, Ellen Ruth Rose, viola; Leighton Fong, cello

Emerald Meditations was inspired by a trip to Thailand in which I visited the Emerald Buddha, a legendary statue in the Wat Phra Kaew temple in Bangkok. This piece describes my experience that day, beginning with the frenetic activity of vendors and tourists outside the temple walls, followed by a moment of silence on entering the temple grounds. Next, I found myself immersed in a stream of people proceeding past a series of shimmering golden stupas towards the main temple. On the temple steps, chaos reigned as everyone struggled to remove their shoes, and guards wrapped scarves around short-sleeved foreigners. On crossing the threshold, I was greeted by another breath of silence. From atop a great pedestal, the Emerald Buddha sat looking down upon us, the statue smaller than I had imagined, yet more commanding than I had thought possible. Around me, worshippers kneeled and prayed, quietly touching their heads to the floor. I am not Buddhist – in fact, I waver between agnostic and atheist - but as I sat there, I could not deny that I, too, found a momentary peace in the Emerald Buddha’s presence.

Willyn Whiting - for Dancer and Projection
For Dancer and Projection (2020) was first written as an accompanying track for Danielle Willis' video dance work Celestial Bodies of the same year. It was produced in a collaboration between the University of North Texas, where I was studying at the time, and Texas Woman's University. Currently it is a stand-alone piece for stereo fixed media. The sound source for this piece, a drone of five sine tones, is decidedly simple and abstract, much like the direction of Willis' choreography. I then granulated this sound-source, taking inspiration from the particle effects that she projected onto her dancer. A simple heartbeat like pulse persists throughout the work. Like many of my pieces it started out as a graph paper sketch with contrapuntal layers of activity.