This work for cello and fixed media is a sound portrait of two beekeepers and their love affair with bees, featuring live cello.  Performed by Madeleine Shapiro 2013.

TheBeekeepers - for cello and fixed media, Madeleine Shapiro, cello

Based on a poem by Rebecca Morgan Frank, this piece is a reenactment of the poem as sound theater.  Humorous, sinister, wry and surprising, Automaton Monk gives listeners a vivid evocation of medieval clockmakers to modern-day robots. This piece has been heard at Electronic Music Midwest, New York City Electronic Music Festival and several more festivals and concerts.

Automaton Monk

Anna Rubin and Laurie Hollander created an award-winning work about Rubin's mother and her childhood in Atlanta.  Raised by an African-American woman, Sally Johnson, Rubin's mother endured multiple losses.  This poignant portrait incorporates spoken word, synthesized and ambient  sound.

Family Stories  Sophie, Sally

For the Love of Bees - Sting (piano only)

For the Love of Bees - Swarm (piano only)

Lyrical, evocative, lush, meditative; performed by renowned cellist Gita Ladd

A Small Impromptu God of the Partial

Stolen Gold is from Anna Rubin's CD, Electric Music.  Scored for amplified Baroque oboe and live electronics, it is performed by Debra Nagy.

Stolen Gold

Rosemary Davis offers her memories of her grandfather, Dr. Henry Hummins, a prominent African-American physician in Indianapolis.  She also describes her growing up in the close vibrant African-American community there.

Family Stories: My Grandfather

This work is scored for orchestra plus fixed media.  It was premiered by the National Orchestral Institute at Carnegie Hall in 1994, conducted by Jorge Mester.

Rainbows Of Love

Freedom, Sweet and Bitter

This work was commissioned by Wiebke Hoogklimmer and is scored for mezzo soprano and wind quintet.  The texts are based on poems by Zoe Anglesey and Giaconda Belli, translated by Elinor Randall from the book Ixok amar·go : poesía de mujeres centroamericanas por la paz, Central American women’s poetry for peace, edited by Ms. Anglesey.   Indigenous Central American languages, Spanish and English are combined in this selection of texts which both mourn the loss of life and celebrate the victory of common people’s struggles.  The harmonic language of the piece is modal with tonal inflections.

IXOX

Remembering, from the CD Electric Music, is scored for mezzo soprano, piano and electorics.  It is a memorial to victims of World War II and includes a setting of the Jewish prayer of mourning, the Kaddish.  Mezzo Judith Kellock and pianist Karl Paulnack perform.

Electric Music

Remembering

This piece starts with the sound of  ocean waves and then goes into imaginative spaces with original sounds made by processing water sounds with piano, harp, and Buddhist chant.  Meditative.

Seachanges

Chiaroscuro (2016) for Wind Ensemble was commissioned by Dr. Brian Kaufman for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Wind Ensemble.  This piece is a constantly changing kaleidoscope of colors from the various winds, percussion and piano.  It is a high energy piece combining powerful massed ensemble writing with  excursions into unusual timbres.

Chiaroscuro II

Lush, romantic harmonies, inventive interplay between sax and harp, commissioned by Pictures on Silence (harpist, Jacqueline Pollauf and saxophonist, Noah Getz) and performed widely.

Silk and Steel for alto sax and harp

Sound Collage, documentary sound, biographical story of young DACA recipient, who came to this country from Mexico when she was 7.  She describes her growing up in Mexico and the trip she took to get to the US to rejoin her mother and father.

Karina's Journey

Olive Tree is an accessible choral work with vivid choral writing, at turns joyous and rhythmic as well as poignant and lyrical.  The incredibly rich history of the olive tree is woven throughout the piece.  There are humorous allusions to Adam and Eve eating of the olive tree, the Greek myth of Athena as well as the olive branch which promised Noah the end of the flood.  A lovers' lament in the central section was adapted from a poem by  erbian poet Nataša Bajic (with her permission). The piece ends in celebration of the longevity and resilience of the olive tree.  The piece was commissioned by the Washington International Chorus and premiered in May 2019.

Olive Tree

This ambient electronic work evokes the world of subtle, alluring and at times threatening sounds of the night. Women's spoken text are  processed in a variety of ways along with processed cello fragments.   This work was last heard at the NY International Festival of Electronic Music in conjunction with the International Computer Music Association.

Late at Night

Songs to Death comprises four sections, set to four poems by Sylvia Plath: Sheep in Fog, Words, Ariel, and Mary's Song.  The setting is expressionistic and lyrical, evoking the intense imagery of Plath.  This performance of Words and Ariel features Patricia Green, soprano, Gita Ladd, cello and Audrey Andrist, piano and was recorded at the Livewire Festival of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County in 2014.

Livewire Festival, Patricia Gr

Words and Ariel, from Songs to Death

Composer of choral, chamber, orchestral and electronic music

Anna Rubin Music

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