Score and more info:
http://pronovamusic.com/notes/ridgeline.html

Ridgeline was composed in the spring of 2023 for premiere by Michael Stern and the National Repertory Orchestra at the opening concert of their 30th season at the Riverwalk Center in Breckenridge, Colorado. The music is inspired by the ridgeline of mountain peaks visible from Breckenridge, particularly Peaks 6-10, which make up the town’s ski area. The quiet sunrise opening of the piece imagines rays of sun sneaking through clouds and distant creaks of ice or perhaps mining machinery starting up. Introductory calls are heard from solo winds and brass. The music gradually picks up steam and is inspired by various activities in the mountains during the history of Breckenridge, including mining during the Gold Rush (listen for the panning/sifting), development of a vibrant town (a bit of fiddlin’), and recently, skiing (“white gold”) and climbers scrambling along the ridges. More specifically, some of the musical ingredients of the piece include short motifs from a couple Gold Rush songs (which I may or may not reveal!) and one from Snake Alley, a work I composed for the NRO back in 1989, prior to the move to Breckenridge. The ridgeline of Peaks 6-10 is reflected both literally – in rhythms and harmonies derived from the peaks’ distances and elevations – and more generally in many melodic contours reflective of the mountain range. The work dances to a close with vivid colors of a brilliant sunset at day's end (and the miner's hopes fading away...).

This is a MIDI realization demo recording, made in Dorico with NotePerformer.

Ridgeline for orchestra, 2024 revision

I. Drips & Drops
II. Floating City of Lake Texcoco –
III. Aqueduct Run

http://pronovamusic.com/notes/flow.html

instrumentation: 
1(=pc)22(cl,bcl)2(bn,cbn) - 2211 - Timp, Perc(3), Hp, Pno - Strings - flute soloist

Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México, November 9-10, 2019 (live)
Iván del Prado, conductor; Alejandro Escuer, flute
     I–0:00 (improvised cadenza 3:54-4:27)
     II–7:25 (improvised cadenza 7:11-8:17)
     III–14:21

Program Note:

Composed for and dedicated to my good friend and long-time professional colleague, flautist Alejandro Escuer, FLOW is a concerto for flute and orchestra. One can imagine many things “flowing”: air, creating the flute’s sound; water traveling from here to there around this whole planet – giving us all life and a shared elemental experience; people, moving to and fro; and of course, music, especially music passing ideas back and forth among musicians or taking one or more motives on a journey across a piece of music lasting some 20 minutes, as in FLOW. Each of these examples of flow also involve transformation, in a process that might be circular, or perhaps never-ending.

While composing this concerto, I thought much about the flow of water, and even specifically, about the flow of and history of water in Mexico City, which of course was built upon a lake and continues to have challenges relating to water. Supplying fresh water to the population is not easy, and while extracting twice the amount of water as that replenishing the underground aquifers, the city continues to sink, such that the zócalo is now below the level of Lake Texcoco, which was the lowest point in the Valley of México.

The first movement is called “Drips & Drops.” Over the course of about six minutes the music gradually transforms from the opening single short note played by the flute into short motives and then longer lines and gestures; many of these descend in the way of water following gravity, not unlike the Aztec’s aqueducts. The slow central movement contemplates the shifting ground beneath the city afloat on the aquifers below lake Texcoco. Blocks of sound shift in relation to each other throughout, and the climax presents a large imposing structure arising and then sinking. The closing movement imagines water traveling the paths of the old aqueducts but is also inspired by the bustling activity and flow of people around the city.

For any theorists in the audience: some key melodic shapes are drawn from letters in Alejandro Escuer’s
name: AAEADD for his first name (L for the pitch A, or “La” in solfege; R for pitch D, or “Re”; I skipped
over j and o). Escuer translates as EBCCED.

FLOW - concerto for flute and orchestra (2019)

David Dzubay has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Fromm and Barlow foundations, among others. Recent honors include Guggenheim, Bogliasco, MacDowell, Yaddo, Copland House and Djerassi fellowships, a 2011 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2010 Heckscher Prize and the 2015 Sackler Prize. His music has been performed by orchestras, ensembles and soloists in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia, and is published by Pro Nova Music and recorded on the Sony, Bridge, Centaur, Innova, Naxos, Crystal, Klavier, Gia, and First Edition labels. Currently chair of the Composition Department and Director of the New Music Ensemble at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Dzubay also spent three years as Composer-Consultant to the Minnesota Orchestra and one as Composer-in-Residence with the Green Bay Symphony. He joined the faculty at the Brevard Music Center in summer 2011.

FLOW - concerto for flute and orchestra (2019)

David Dzubay

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