Tapemveni is a suite of movements for cello, performed here by Jan Müller-Szeraws. The title means "hammered rock" or "pounded sign," and it was inspired by the ancient rock art of the indigenous peoples of the North American southwest. The four movements are entitled shaman, flute player, dancer, and remembrance.

Tapamveni

Collage New Music commissioned Turning Point to celebrate their 50th anniversary: They premiered the music in April, 2022.

Turning Point

This music, composed in 1979, is for two players on flute and a variety of percussion instruments. There are four movements: Prelude, Two-Part Invention, Caprice, and Fantasy.

Duo for Flute and Percussion

'Dance of Death' by Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543) inspired this composition, along with compositions by Henry VIII, in whose court he served. There are 6 movements, with titles from Holbein's corresponding images: 
I. Bones of all the Men
II. The Ploughman
III. The King 
IV. The Child
V. The Lady
VI. The Old Man and Woman

Six Dances of Death

Collage New Music commissioned and premiered Tableaux I in 1991. They gave this reprise performance on April 16, 2023, conducted by music director David Hoose. There are three movements: Flight, Elegy (in time of war), and Diddle-ee Dee.

Tableaux I

Peter and Carolyn Gombosi commissioned my second quartet to celebrate the birth of their son, Andrew. The Lydian Quartet gave the premiere, and made this recording for New World Records. A tone of celebration pervades the music, especially in the rhythmic vigor of the first movement with its fanfare-like first theme. A familiar lullaby is interwoven into the second movement. The last movement is jazzy and brisk, pausing for a solemn moment before hurtling to its close.

String Quartet No 2

The Cantata Singers commissioned The Year of the Rat for online, streamed performance in 2020. The poet Fiona Sze-Lorrain wrote four new verses for the songs, which reflect her experience of the coronavirus pandemic in Paris: 'Changing the Tune,' 'Hypnosis,' 'A Nonbiological Response,' and 'After Changing the Tune.' In this recording the four unaccompanied songs are sung by soprano Tony Arnold.

The Year Of The Rat

A Golden Apple: Six Songs of Intimacy and Loss (2023) is a cycle of songs set to verses by contemporary women poets. The recording is the premiere performance by Tony Arnold, soprano, and Christopher Oldfather, piano, from March 17, 2024. The six songs making up the cycle, with timings, are:

1.	Laughing Together (Rebecca Faery) 00:00
2.	Changing the Tire (Lorrie Goldensohn) 02:50
3.	Untouchable (Fiona Sze-Lorrain) 05:01
4.	The Beat Goes On (Sappho, trans. Ann Carson) 11:57
5.	At the Edge of Being (Teresa Cader) 16:04
6.	Left-Wife Goose (Sharon Olds) 20:03

A Golden Apple: Six Songs of Intimacy and Loss

Clare Cycle is four songs, played without pause, set to poetry by "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," John Clare (1793-1864). Clare was one of the great English Romantics, whose poems are famous for their acute, tender observations of nature, their use of local dialect (similar to Burns's), and, in the later work, Clare's account of his madness. The full spectrum is on display in these songs: I. "The Yellowhammer's Nest," II. "Song," III. "I am," and IV. "Clock-A-Clay." The New England Conservatory commissioned Clare Cycle for the NEC Contemporary Ensemble in 1984.

CLARE CYCLE

I wrote Sonatina for Oboe for Peggy Pearson, who plays on this recording, in 1986. The first and last movements ("Invention," "Toccatina") are playful and brisk.  The middle movement ("Air") is the longest; it is the sorrowful, song-like soul of the piece.

SONATINA FOR OBOE

'Prayers from the Ark' is a piece for narrator and wind quintet. After Noah's prayer comes the Lark, the Goldfish, the Little Pig, the Bee, the Ox, the Foal, the Glow-Worm, and the Dove, each one represented in the instrumental music. The poems are by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, translated by Rumer Godden. North Shore Pro Musica gave this performance with David Bouchier, narrator.

Prayers from the Ark

The Emmanuel Wind Quintet commissioned and premiered this work in 1983. It has four movements: Agitated, Slow, Swing, Slow. This recording is by the Ariel Quintet: Clare Nielsen, flute; Charlyn Bethell, oboe; Rebecca Leonard, clarinet; Ellen Donohue-Saltman, French horn; Tracy McGinnis, bassoon.

WIND QUINTET

The Boston Chamber Music Society commissioned Four Movements after Kandinsky for 2024-25 season. They premiered the piece with Peggy Pearson, oboe, Marcus Thompson, viola, and Max Levinson, piano.
I. “Flame” (Flamme) , 1907: A still, meditative woman in traditional costume stands disquietingly adjacent to a mounted rider, the horse rearing precipitously on its hind legs before a wall of flame. 
II. “Two Riders before Red” (Zwei Reiter var Rot), Klänge (Sounds), 1913. One rider hurtles forward and the other rears, against a background of intense red and windswept trees. 
III. “Oboe,” Klänge 1913: “Nepomuk leaned his back against the trunk of the little white green birch tree, pulled out his big long black oboe and played many beautiful songs that everybody knows. He played for a long time with deep feeling.”
IV. “Great Resurrection” (Grosse Auferstehung),  Klänge 1913: What seems at first a vortex of abstract color and line resolves, as we take it in, into apocalyptic images—a sounding horn, a headless figure, a cowering crowd, in the distance the ubiquitous rider and rearing horse, and more.  Music hurtles to its climax at the midpoint of movement IV, a turning point, where turbulence and storm gradually give way to lyrical tranquility, closure, and transcendence.

Four Movements after Kandinsky

Emily Dickinson Songs (1998) is a setting of 7 miniature poems by Dickinson. The poems sound the deepest of philosophical notes but with the lightest of touches, and he cycle traces an arc from the concrete to the abstract. 
				
I. How soft a Caterpillar steps—	
I find one on my Hand	
From such a velvet world it comes
Such plushes at command
Its soundless travels just arrest	
My slow — terrestrial eye
Intent upon its own career	
What use has it for me —

II. A soft Sea washed around the House	
A Sea of Summer Air	
And rose and fell the magic Planks
That sailed without a care —
For Captain was the Butterfly		
For Helmsman was the Bee
And an entire universe
For the delighted crew.
				
III. A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel —		
A Resonance of Emerald —		
A Rush of Cochineal —		
And every Blossom on the Bush		
Adjusts its tumbled Head —		
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning's Ride —
				
IV. How happy is the little Stone	
That rambles in the Road alone, 	
And doesn't care about Careers	
And Exigencies never fears —
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,		
And independent as the Sun		
Associates or glows alone,		
Fulfilling absolute Decree		
In casual simplicity —

V. The Butterfly upon the Sky,
That doesn’t know its Name
And hasn’t any tax to pay
And hasn’t any Home
Is just as high as you and I,
And higher, I believe,
So soar away and never sigh
And that’s the way to grieve —

VI. I groped for him before I knew
With solemn nameless need
All other bounty sudden chaff
For this foreshadowed Food
Which others taste and spurn and sneer
Though I within suppose
That consecrated it could be
The only Food that grows

VII. Not seeing, still we know —
Not knowing, guess —
Not guessing, smile and hide
And half caress —

And quake — and turn away,
Seraphic fear —
Is Eden’s innuendo
 “If you dare”?

Emily Dickinson Songs

A "Song of the Spirit," meant for audience (or congregational) participation, based upon Peace Poem After a Ugaritic Inscription, by Eli Netzer (trans. Moshe Dor): "Call war off the land / Put love on earth / Pour peace over the land / Make love plentiful over fields / Withhold your rod sheath your sword." Commissioned by Winsor Music.

Peace Poem

Dialogue 2012, for flute solo, is a companion piece to Debussy's famous Sirynx. Commissioned by the Pappoutsakis Foundation, this performance is by Barry Crawford of Ensemble Pi.

Dialogue, for flute

The Cantata Singers and Ensemble commissioned Lamentations in honor of David Hoose's 35th year as music director. The music sets excerpts from the modern translation of biblical Book of Lamentations by David Rosenberg.  It is a musical response to the ever-worsening horrors of the global crises of refugees, displaced persons, and undocumented immigrants.

Peter Child

Pinned to spotlight

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