BMI Composer Awards

With a Greeting (2011)
for SSAATTBB Chorus unaccompanied

Words by Afanasy Fet (1820 – 1892)
Music by Joshua Fishbein

Commissioned by The Esoterics, Eric Banks, founding director; 
for the POLYPHONOS Young Composer Prize, 2011
Winner of the BMI 60th Annual Student Composer Award, 2012

Recorded live by The Esoterics
October 9, 2011
Holy Rosary Catholic Church
West Seattle, Washington

ECS Publishing, Catalog No. 8030

With a Greeting

String Quartet No. 2

'The Ninth Gate' is a chamber piece for double bass quartet. This piece was recorded live in Tampa, November 2013

The Ninth Gate (Live)

Nympharum, Cantata for High Soprano and Orchestra

Vaughan String Quartet premiering Ka Spoojmai Shwa Poh Hala Ke by Seare Farhat at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Evolution: Quartet in Summer 2022.

Ka Spoojmai Shwa Poh Hala Ke (like the halo around the moon...)

Tightrope Walker is my first piece for full orchestra. Given the large forces available to me, I wanted to write something exciting, colorful and visceral. I remembered back to when I was a kid going to see Cirque du Soleil. That trip made a big impression on me, especially the high wire performers. These were artists performing super-human feats 100 feet in the air, where even the slightest mistake guaranteed a fatal ending. Tightrope Walker is a musical depiction of that special event.

The opening of the piece hints at what's to come - a steady, walking pulse interrupted by missteps in the woodwinds. These missteps increase until the entire orchestra comes crashing down - not a good sign for our Tightrope Walker. The tempo slows and the atmosphere becomes tense. The primary themes of the piece are presented in fragments, most notably the beginning of the Tightrope Walker's theme in the horns. The orchestra gradually recovers from the previous fall, becoming more lively and coherent until the original, faster tempo is restored.

We are now at the circus, excited and expectant, and the fragmentary themes heard previously are now presented in their full forms. The anticipation builds until we hear a solo drum roll - the main act is about to begin. The second half of the piece depicts the Tightrope Walker performing for his audience. But from the outset, as in the beginning of the piece, we hear there are problems. The pressure mounts, the audience clamoring for more, until Tightrope Walker comes to a decisive and potentially fatal end.

Tightrope Walker for Orchestra

Recorded by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, February 2023
Conducted by Juliano Dutra Aniceto

Frika (Excerpt)

Riven BMI COMPOSER AWARD WINNER 2023 Natasha Frank ft, Suuvi

Read by the Juilliard Orchestra on April 24, 2023. 
Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor

As if sharing a joke with nothingness (2023) for orchestra

Arboreal - Maxwell Lu

Chiaroscuro for orchestra (2014)

for baritone and guitar
texts by Jackson Bliss

Live recording from my Doctorate Recital at USC Thornton School of Music, 2011
Mario Diaz-Moresco, baritone 
Jack Cimo, guitar

View the score at:  http://issuu.com/lauramkramer/docs/the_miracle_of_the_walking_fish/1

The Miracle of the Walking Fish is a story about the transformation of Love, centering on a boy who leaves Todos Santos, a town in Baja California full of artisans, artists, even expats from North America, to find his father in California. But instead of finding his dad, the boy meets a Peruvian girl in Los Feliz, and falls in love with her. Together they take a bus to Santa Monica, connect to each of their homelands on the beach, and then they throw the boy's twin stones back in to the Pacific Ocean. This is the beginning of their new life together as two Americans living in a city of new beginnings. The music is designed to convey the sense of motion and natural lyricism in the texts. Extended techniques and timbral effects in both the voice and guitar are frequently used to portray thematic ideas. For instance, the twin stones and their symbolism for family are depicted by guitar harmonics surrounded by tranquil sonorities, while muffled colors such as tambora (striking the strings rather than plucking) represent heat, dryness, or heaviness. An eclectic range of styles is introduced from movement to movement, from rock, to melodious, to abstract, depending on the mood or setting. The Miracle of the Walking Fish evolved from the Writer and Composer course at USC, co- taught by professors Frank Ticheli and David St. John.

Copyright 2011 Jackson Bliss and Laura M. Kramer

The Miracle Of The Walking Fish  8. Mártires (2011)

Butterflies and Dragons (2011)
Daniel Temkin (b. 1986)
Written for Nonsemble 6 and the Melos Music Festival

Winner, 2012 BMI Composer Award

Butterflies and Dragons was composed for the 2011 Melos Music Festival in San Francisco, CA.  Throughout the piece, I was interested in exploring textures and colors that would sparkle and shimmer, while always maintaining a kinetic dialogue between the instruments.  Writing about the premiere (in which I played the percussion part), Bay-Area critic Adam Broner remarked:

Composer and percussionist Daniel Temkin chose bursts of energy in his sextet.  Here, each instrument is treated almost as a form of percussion: short motifs come off the strings as an explosive force, then refer back to Temkin’s own playing on an array of percussion…[This sextet,] though exuberant, contains a thoughtful core, perhaps the butterfly within the dragon.

Butterflies And Dragons (2012)

Reflections on the Death of the Beloved (2008) for symphonic band is dedicated to the St. Olaf Band and Timothy Mahr. It was commissioned by the St. Olaf Band with help from the Miles "Mity" Johnson Endowment.

Note by the composer: 

This piece began as something very different, and far less personal.

In October 2007 I began writing a new work for symphonic band. At that time I planned to write two movements for band inspired by Norse mythology. One would be a meditation on the tragic story of Balder, and I immediately began sketches on a deep lament for the brass choir.

Over the past several years, six young people who were part of my community died before their time. They were lost to accidents, crime, disease, and war. Two passed immediately after I began work on this piece. As I reflected, the lament took on new meaning, and the music took new directions.

When it came time to name my work, I tried to think of titles that would hide or soften the serious and personal thoughts that informed the composition. But nothing but Reflections on the Death of the Beloved seemed honest.

It is painful when lives are lost to tragedy, especially when those lives are young. They have gone on to realms unknown and we cannot yet follow. But we remember, and we love, in whatever ways we can.


Reflections on the Death of the Beloved

Mie: Caprice for Eight Musicians

This work is a concerto for clarinet and wind ensemble, commissioned and performed by Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet, and the California State University at Northridge wind ensemble, conducted by Lawrence Stoffel
Bennu's Fire is the recipient of a 2012 BMI Student Composer Award and a 2012 ASCAP Morton Gould Award.  For more information, please visit http://www.rogerzare.com/bennu.htm

Zare - Bennu's Fire - I. Rebirth

Instrumentation: two pianos, electronics 
Performers: Yuxi Qin, Wensi Yan
Year: 2010

Kolokol (2010) for two pianos and electronics

"Ritual Dances" for Percussion Quartet
Performed by Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

Ritual Dances

Works and Composers Featured on MATA's 15th Annual Festival of New Music. April 17-20 at Roulette

Evan Antonellis twelve futures

The Light Bringer for Orchestra

Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra
James Feddeck, conductor

BMI Composer Awards

BMI Foundation