Setting for soprano, flute, and guitar of a Wallace Stevens poem. First performance in Copenhagen in November 2020.

Cy est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et les Unze Mille Vierges

Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She kneeled upon the ground
And gathered them,
With flowers around,
Blue, gold, pink, and green.
She dressed in red and gold brocade
And in the grass an offering made
Of radishes and flowers.
She said, "My dear,
Upon your altars,
I have placed
The marguerite and coquelicot,
And roses
Frail as April snow;
But here," she said,
"Where none can see,
I make an offering, in the grass,
Of radishes and flowers."
And then she wept
For fear the Lord would not accept.
The good Lord in His garden sought
New leaf and shadowy tinct,
And they were all His thought.
He heard her low accord,
Half prayer and half ditty,
And He felt a subtle quiver,
That was not heavenly love,
Or pity.
This is not writ
In any book.

In Progress

A Sacred Song

ConnectiveTissue - Marina Kifferstein, violin

"Mind Mirror : Nyodai's Dream" for shakuhachi, pipa and 17-string koto (1998)Duration: ca.10'. Premiered by Ned Rothenberg, shakuhachi; Min Xiao-Fen, pipa; and Masayo Ishigure, koto, at the International Conference for Medieval Japanese Culture hosted by Columbia University's Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at St. Paul's Church in 1998.

Mind Mirror: Nyodai's Dream

I. Slam

It's the first electronic thing I've done in a long time. I don't love it, but at least it's something. ioioioioioioioioioioio

ioioioio

"Hymn to a Blue Hour" for trombone choir
by John Mackey
performed by Joseph Alessi, accompanied by the Alessi Seminar Participant Choir, conducted by Jonathan Whitaker.
Live performance from August 3, 2013.
Score available here: http://ostimusic.com/Hymn-Tbn.php

John Mackey: Hymn to a Blue Hour (trombone choir version), feat. Joseph Alessi

6 voices - Ekmeles with electronics

Mary Mackenzie
Rachel Calloway
Patrick Fennig
Eric Dudley
Jeffrey Gavett
Steven Hrycelak

defining silence (2015) Ekmeles - 6 voices and electronics

This is the Koch International Classics recording with Dora Ohrenstein, soprano; Judith Pearce, alto flute and Masayo Ishigure, koto.  The photo by Seth Tillett is from the Dec.1, 2015 performance at Opera America with Martha Cluver, soprano; Sarah Carrier, alto flute and Mayuko Matsuda, koto.  You can see the video of this performance by the Aviva Ensemble on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkke6F6lis&list=PLYEPrmRM36Vtubr5ibqwOucPm5ycZGToo

Komachi at Sekidera is a mini-opera for soprano, alto flute and koto based on the Japanese Noh play "Sekidera Komachi" by Kanze Motokiyo Zeame (1363-1443).  

The protagonist of the play, Ono no Komachi, was a woman of great literary gifts and beauty who lived at the Heian court in ninth-century Japan.  She became a legend after her death, and many apocryphal stories surround the few known biographical facts concerning her life.  In the present piece Komachi has lived into old age, beyond her beauty and her literary fame, and has been forgotten.  Confronted with age and mortality, she alternates between crying out for the days that are gone, and quieter sections in which she contemplates the bittersweet delight of still being alive.  

The structure of this little opera was influenced by the dramatic monologues of Monteverdi’s operas and 18th-century Japanese Kumiuta songs. The modal character of the melody, which often returns to the unstable interval of the tritone, mirrors Komachi’s existential state, as does the alto flute, which shadows her feelings with sounds reminiscent of the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute.  The koto reflects Komachi's passionate nature.

-- Alice Shields

Komachi at Sekidera (monodrama)

On Expansion (2009) Richard Valitutto, piano

Piccolo and electronics
Robin Meiksins, Piccolo

Frog and saucepan photo by James Lee

Drishti - Robin Meiksins, Piccolo

This performance is by a single performer, the incomparable soprano Amber Evans, who recorded all the parts. This new realization of my work was recorded and edited by Brian Daurelle. Below is my original program note for the piece.

A few years ago Zsuzsanna Ardó approached me about composing a piece for C4 based on her poem who are you?, a stark and powerful meditation on the nature of identity and how we think and speak about it, as well as the ways in which we sometimes uncritically accept others’ definitions of it for ourselves. I was glad to engage and come to terms with it, and to join the ranks of several other of my C4 colleagues who also have chosen to set Zsuzsanna’s poetry: Daniel Andor-Ardó, Artemisz Polonyi, Bettina Sheppard and Perry Townsend. 
 
Among the challenges in setting the poem is its insistent quality, particularly its numerous repetitions that become obsessive refrains (e.g., “time and space”), along with gradually accruing strings of words commonly used in reference to the ways humans describe, contextualize, and otherwise "place" themselves and one another:
 
“culture script legacy web screen
grid frames imprints blueprints
template, language practice memes genes
manners mores prism universe tapestry”
 
A text that contains this much repetition and is this expansive is a test of a composer's resourcefulness. All one can do in the end, it seems, is embrace those aspects. A ritualistic, objective approach struck me as natural and essential, involving a refrain-like use of the poetry's iterative elements. The choice of treble voices perhaps evokes the idea of a siren call, though more in the sense of being compelling or riveting than seductive or alluring. The pure, clear timbre of a choir of sopranos and altos for me also evokes the feeling of a ritual, as well as possessing a kind of radiating intensity that I associate with certain music of Stravinsky, particularly works such as Symphonies of Wind Instruments, a piece that is itself ritualistic in its attitude and formal structure. As has occurred more than once in my life, I have been presented with the opportunity to write a piece that I might not have come to on my own, but that in the end I am very glad to have written. Thank you, Zsuzszanna, for giving me that opportunity, and thank you to the trebles of C4 and Timothy Brown for bringing this piece to life.
 
—Hayes Biggs

who are you? (new realization by Amber Evans)

One of the pioneers of electronic music, Alice Shields creates cross-cultural electronic and acoustic operas and music for voice, dance, theater and video. Her work is influenced by Japanese Noh Theater and Indian Bharata Natyam dance-drama, and has been performed by the New York City Opera Vox Festival, Academie der Künste (Berlin), Venice Biennale, Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Arangham Dance Theater (India), Dance Alloy (Pittsburgh), NYC-Electroacoustic Music Festival, Santa Fe Opera Gallery Concerts, Association for the Promotion of New Music, American Composers Alliance, Ensemble Pi, Iktus Percussion and other groups. 

Her work is recorded on New World, Koch International Classics, Albany, CRI, Atlantic Records, American Composers Alliance Recordings, Opus One and Tellus, and is published by the American Composers Alliance: https://composers.com/alice-shields

Komachi at Sekidera (monodrama)

Alice Shields

Related tracks