yes baby, this is speaking to me!! beautiful

For Soprano and Fixed Media
Text by Susan Bywaters
Performer: Shannyn Rinker

[Weight] confronts the command at the heart of diet culture: lose weight at all costs. This incessant message is the manifestation of diet culture, a prescription for the body to eat itself. Daily microaggressions repeat this mantra so constantly that to hear it is akin to hearing your own thoughts: lose weight by whatever means necessary. In this piece, the singer hears and responds to to this caustic message. They internalize it, their spiraling thoughts represented  by the repetitious electronics. They respond, like many do, by falling down the slippery slope of diet culture, and the control that it promises as it tightens its grip.  But this illusion of control has dangerous implications. It will destroy any body it claims to save. 

CW: This work discusses body dysmorphia, eating disorders and self-harm. 

Cover image by Jessie Ragsdale

[Weight]

Performed by Ensemble Pamplemousse with Laura Cocks, Charlotte Mundy, and Marina Kifferstein, Aug 2021. Commissioned by Darmstadt Ferienkürse 2020 (2021).

This is a bridge.
This bridge is not your typical "cable" bridge.
This one does not go to nowhere.
It is much stronger, and it is made with little pieces of metal in it.
It is sturdy, but it takes time and it does not always hold.
Like anything else, it can break.
Sometimes people will drive onto the bridge, and jump over the side.
Some people will jump right into water.
Some people will jump right onto the train tracks on the other side of the river.
The bridge has no train tracks.
It is the train tracks that make the bridge.

The bridge has no train tracks (Universal™ Love)

Takashi Yoshimatsu - Digital Bird Suite
II. A Bird in the Twilight
IV. A Bird in the Noon
V. Bird Circuit

Aqueeressence
Yoshi Weinberg, flute
Daniel Schreiner, piano

Takashi Yoshimatsu - Digital Bird Suite (mvts. 2, 4, 5)

It is a Comfort to Know - An Opera
Composed by Elizabeth Gartman, libretto by Susan Bywaters
original production directed by Madeline Whitesell
Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects for Next Gen: Cycle 2, 2022

Performers:
Kamna Gupta, conductor
Sydney Anderson, featured soprano
Contemporaneous, orchestra

Featured photo by Sean Salamon

It is a Comfort to Know - An Opera: Prologue

Aqueeressence
Yoshi Weinberg, flute
Daniel Schreiner, piano

Yuko Uebayashi's Sonata for flute and piano is made up of four movements with a typical performance lasting around 26 minutes.

'Uebayashi has a distinct compositional style that combines two unexpected styles: French impressionist music and Japanese film music. In particular, Uebayashi is inspired by landscapes, light, and paintings, and she only writes music for musicians to whom she feels a connection. This sonata was commissioned by Jean Ferrandis (flute) and Emile Naoumoff (piano), French musicians of the highest caliber. She admired Ferrandis's playing for its 'very soft, fine pianissimo, akin to glasswork; a passionately eloquent and fiery forte, the instruments singing with gentle, tender-hearted elegance.

The Sonate consists of four movements: starting with a tender and sentimental slow introduction, the first movement, Allegro Moderato, alternates between two themes; the Presto, second movement, is reminiscent of a scherzo, featuring the contrast of playful staccato and virtuosic legato; the third movement, which evokes the feelings of a song, is graceful and calm; and the vibrant fourth movement is an energetic rondo.'

- Paraphrased from The Flute Music of Yuko Uebayashi by Pei-San Chiu; Stephanie Hoeckley; 2018"

Yuko Uebayashi - Flute Sonata (Live Performance)

Aqueeressence
Yoshi Weinberg, flute
Daniel Schreiner, piano

Live performance at The Graduate Center (CUNY) Elebash Hall. 

Olivier Messiaen's "Le Merle Noir" for flute and piano was written in 1952 as a test piece for the Conservatoire de Paris. This was Messiaen's first piece to imitate the song of a single bird species, the Blackbird.

Messiaen - Le Merle Noir

ornithology of desire for was commissioned by InfraSound Ensemble as part of their 23/24 season. It is scored for three spatialized piccolos and electronics. 

Performed on November 11th, 2023 by InfraSound Ensemble
"Portals Between Worlds," LGBT Center of New York
Yoshi Weinberg, Stefanie Proulx, and Megan Torti, piccolos
Alex Ring Gray, electronics

ornithology of desire (2023) for three piccolos and electronics

Commissioned by Americas Society

Performers: Charlotte Mundy, Soprano
Yoshi Weinberg, flutes
Madison Greenstone, clarinets
Russell Greenberg, percussions
Kathryn Sloat, harp
Alec Goldfarb, electric guitar
Pala Garcia, violin
Thea Mesirow, cello
Tristan Kasten Krause, double bass
Yanqi Chen, electronics
Sebastian Zubieta, conductor

Mixing and Mastering by Murat Çolak at GERYON Label.

Mors Osculi (Live performance)

(2013 revised 2015) for flute, vibraphone, piano & cello

Seven Songs is a re-arrangement/re-conception of a piece I wrote in 2011, originally scored for soprano sax, acoustic guitar, harp and percussion. In that original version, each of the seven movements really was like a song, with a simple melody, accompaniment or motive.

This new version retains many of the features of the old, including the order of the movements, the general structure of the piece, and the simplified harmonic language. But it distills and fractures the melodies and rhythms of the original: sometimes that means greater rhythmic detail and complexity, sometimes it means creating different ways of playing together, and sometimes it means eliminating everything from a movement except one small gesture, and exploring that gesture in much greater detail. The resultant set of songs is, hopefully, still emotionally direct and clear, but also freer, more elusive and continuously transforming. The piece now seems to be more like a set of spaces or empty rooms than a set of songs, each movement opening up onto the next space, the light slowly changing.

Performed at the nief-norf Festival 2016. Joshua Weinberg, flute; Aaron Gochberg, percussion; Daniel Schreiner, piano; Sophie Chang, cello.

Seven Songs (2015 version)

This work was written and performed at nief-norf Summer Festival 2017 in Knoxville, TN. 

It was written as a musical diary entry about my struggle with depression and anxiety and the eventual realization that happiness is something we create from within.

How To Kill A Hummingbird: Improvisation On Depression, Anxiety, and Happiness

Yoshi Weinberg

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