Demo of a percussion trio (vibraphone, high drum, low drum) composed for the ensemble Neopercusión. First performance on 15 November 2021 in Salzburg.

Motets In Parallel

This piece is a set of variations and extensions of two adjacent passages from my earlier piece, "Repetition Compulsion."

CertainIrregularities

Germ idea for the piece was the Mugshot Number for a certain ex-president: 01135809, slicing off the first two digits.  Beginning minute and penultimate three minutes were copied from earlier piece, 3-4-5 Triangles, but using new pitch rows.  New material at end attempting "closure."

BorrowedTime

Criseyde is my feminist revenge opera in which I re-wrote Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.

I used Chaucer's own Middle English and twisted it around to give the female character Criseyde a way out of the control and abuse.  

A chamber opera for 5 solo singers, ensemble of 3 singers, and 14 instruments, Criseyde was performed in concert by the New York City Opera VOX festival of contemporary American operas, and recorded by The American Virtuosi in 2008.  On this recording soprano Kerri Marcinko is the heroine Criseyde, baritone Richard Byrne is Troilus and bass Larry Long is Pandar, with conductor Kenneth Hamrick and the musicians of The American Virtuosi.  

They are singing in Middle English.  

The action: Troilus is in bed pretending to be sick.  Pandar tricks Criseyde into coming to see him. The Ladies watch.  Criseyde maintains her composure, but finds herself trapped into accepting Troilus as her lover.  

Published by The American Composers Alliance, Inc. (BMI)
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© copyright 2006 Alice Shields All Rights Reserved

Engagement Scene from the opera Criseyde

A new Artifact for piano. It seems to have a more dance-like persona than my other recent pieces.

Artifact VIII - 7-14 - 2024

A setting of "Estat ai en greu cossirier" by Beatriz, Comtessa di Dia, one of the woman troubadours. Rough demo. For mezzo, electric guitar with F/X, theorbo. Played many times by Vox n Plux but hard to record properly in performance.

Estat Ai

William Kentner Anderson's Op. 1

Cygnus, with Mark Shapiro, conductor
featuring violinist Jaqueline Carrasco
and flutist Tara Helen O'Connor
with John Whitfield, cello
Oren Fader, guitar
composer on mandolin
Peter Jarvis or percussion
Margaret Kampmeier on piano
from 1994?
live at Merkin Hall (1995 or 6?)
--guitar & mandolin un-amplified and sadly low in the mix--

This is Cygnus, with Mark Shapiro conducting

Tara Helen O'Connor, flute
Jaqueline Carrasco, violin
John Whitfield, cello
Wm. Kentner Anderson, mandolin
Oren Fader, guitar
Peter Jarvis, percussion
Margaret Kampmeier, piano

1996 or 7 or so

Variations-- I Will Give My Love an Apple, by William Anderson

“A Choir of Sirens” explores and decomposes salient sonic features common to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg, refashioning them into something recognizable but intriguingly altered. The piece asks the listener to re-experience the cities' sonic environments, revealing familiar elements in a new light as surprisingly harmonious, discordant, or somewhere in between. Birds and people transform into strange wild creatures, rain attacks in spatters, passing drones boil into an encompassing swarm, and the traffic and sirens of both cities eventually meld into an uneasily beautiful and overwhelming HORN-GASM (!!!). Of course, sirens also act as warning signals of impending danger, and we fail to heed them at our own peril.

“A Choir of Sirens” was written for Phase 2 of The Wil(helms|liams)burg project, AKA W-Burg, a 2017/2018 cross-continental collaboration between composers in Hamburg, Germany, and Brooklyn, NY. The source recordings for this piece were gathered in 2017 in both locations, and it premiered at the 48h Wilhelmsburg/blurred edges festival in Hamburg on June 9, 2018.

More information on the project:
http://w-burg.com/

Festivals:
http://musikvondenelbinseln.de/48h
http://www.vamh.de/index.php?what=blurred_edges&year=2018&gig=3562

A Choir Of Sirens

Alternates between active and dreamy passages.

MovingOn

Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major, M. 83, composed between 1929 and 1931. The concerto is heavily influenced by jazz, which Ravel had encountered on a concert tour of the United States in 1928.
First movement: Allegramente
Beth Levin, piano, with the Ridgefield Symphony, Sidney Rothstein, conductor.

Song

Frank Brickle

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