Yes… It’s Still a Thing! - album cover
Download Album Cover*

Yes… It’s Still a Thing!

More World Premiere Recordings of New Music for Flute & Classical Guitar

Deirdre Lynds composer
Gary Schocker composer
Kent Holliday composer
Andrea Clearfield composer
Nicole Chamberlain composer
Frederic Hand composer
Katherine Hoover composer
Harvey Sollberger composer

Duo Sequenza
Debra Silvert flute, alto flute
Paul Bowman classical guitar

Release Date: September 9, 2022
Catalog #: NV6467
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Chamber
Flute
Guitar
Piano

Following their Navona Records debut in 2019, Duo Sequenza returns with YES… IT’S STILL A THING!, a new program geared towards building new audiences for today’s classical music and promoting the work of living composers. Comprised of flutist Debra Silvert and classical guitarist Paul Bowman, Duo Sequenza brings an enchanting and harmonious quality that showcase the complementary capabilities of their respective instruments. From emotive and introspective works to scenic vistas painted in sound, the duo once again proves their musical chops and adaptability across a wide array of compositional styles.

Listen

Hear the full album on YouTube

Stream/Buy

Choose your platform

Buy Album: Amazon (CD & download) Qobuz (24-bit download)

Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 John Doe’s Running: I. In the Mind Field Deirdre Lynds Duo Sequenza 2:01
02 John Doe’s Running: II. Anxieties Deirdre Lynds Duo Sequenza 1:35
03 John Doe’s Running: III. Dreams of Freedom Deirdre Lynds Duo Sequenza 1:21
04 John Doe’s Running: IV. Escape Attempt Deirdre Lynds Duo Sequenza 0:53
05 Mysterious Barcodes: I. Improvised Gary Schocker Duo Sequenza 3:55
06 Mysterious Barcodes: II. Pensieroso Gary Schocker Duo Sequenza 3:22
07 Mysterious Barcodes: III. Friendly Ghost, Mostly Gary Schocker Duo Sequenza 3:21
08 Four Romantic Songs Without Words: I. Pensive Kent Holliday Duo Sequenza 3:50
09 Four Romantic Songs Without Words: II. Passionate Kent Holliday Duo Sequenza 1:55
10 Four Romantic Songs Without Words: III. Nostalgic Kent Holliday Duo Sequenza 3:54
11 Four Romantic Songs Without Words: IV. Reflective - Determined Kent Holliday Duo Sequenza 3:12
12 Farlorn Alemen Andrea Clearfield Duo Sequenza 7:27
13 Mangosteen Nicole Chamberlain Duo Sequenza 9:49
14 Four Excursions: I. Andante Frederic Hand Duo Sequenza 1:58
15 Four Excursions: II. Allegro vivace Frederic Hand Duo Sequenza 1:13
16 Four Excursions: III. Andante Frederic Hand Duo Sequenza 2:19
17 Four Excursions: IV. Giocoso Frederic Hand Duo Sequenza 4:24
18 The Drunken Friar from Medieval Suite Katherine Hoover Duo Sequenza 3:02
19 Gazzedolphylloni Harvey Sollberger Duo Sequenza 6:05

Recorded January 12-14, 2021 at Sauder Recital Hall in Goshen IN
Recording Session Producer & Engineer Alan Bise

All C Flutes built by Jack Moore and maintained by Tom Lacy

1980: 14K Jack Moore Scale A=440 / Coltman C#/ Jim Schmidt Gold Pads (tracks 8-11, 13, 19), 1986: 9K Bennett Scale A=442/ Jim Schmidt Black Gold Pads (tracks 14-18), and 1990: 14K Bennett Scale A=442/ Lucien Deluxe Pressed Felt Pads by Pisoni (tracks 1-7); Single 14K Jack Moore Head on each C Flute; Altus Alto Flute 819ES/ Sterling Silver Head (track 12)

Guitars by Robert Mattingly: 1987 (tracks 13 & 19), Jose Ramierez 2A: 1975 (track 12), and Hermann Hauser III: 1995 (all remaining tracks)

Special thanks to Dr. Eric Nelson for the use of his Hauser guitar and to flutist Jane Voyles of Asheville NC

Artist photos Larry A. Brechner

Executive Producer Bob Lord

A&R Director Brandon MacNeil

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Aidan Curran

Artist Information

Duo Sequenza

Ensemble

Duo Sequenza’s passion is to build new audiences for today’s classical music and promote the work of living composers. The duo has toured extensively, premiering American new music throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. Lauded as "… brilliant, gossamer, and completely engaging…a delight to hear..." by Arts Indiana Magazine, they have been honored with invitational performances at the 21st Century Guitar Conference, Flute New Music Consortium Festival, Mid-Atlantic Flute Festival, National Flute Association Convention, and others. Award-winning adjunct projects, composer collaborations, and residencies augment their impact on today’s classical music, as have more than 20 new works written for them.

Learn More

Deirdre Lynds

Composer

Lynds has been actively coaching youth and adult rock bands, as well as teaching privately for most of her adult life. She has collaborated in numerous music environments to develop innovative group and individual lesson curriculums. Passionately committed to music education, Lynds also teaches at Girls Rock Santa Barbara, a non-profit dedicated to the empowerment of women through music. She holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of California at Santa Barbara, respectively.

Gary Shocker

Gary Shocker

Composer

Born into a musical family in Easton PA, Schocker began his musical career on piano, making his recital debut at the age of 3. By the time he was 10, he had added flute to his musical studies. Schocker made his professional debut as a flutist at the age of 15, appearing as soloist with both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, thus establishing a name for himself even before attending The Juilliard School and winning numerous prestigious competitions. Those included the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition, the New York Flute Club’s Young Artist Competition, the East and West International Concert Artists Competition, and Young Concert Artists Competition.

In 1988, he cemented his reputation as a versatile performer by filling in, with only a few hours’ notice, for an ailing Jean-Pierre Rampal in a performance of the Mozart D Major Concerto with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, composing new cadenzas in his head on the way to the concert hall.

A gifted and virtually self-taught composer, Schocker has written music for almost every orchestral instrument, and his work has received multiple recognitions from the International Clarinet Association and the National Flute Association. He has received commissions to write music for competitions, including for the NFA’s High School Soloist Competition and the International Flute Competition in Biwako, Japan. Many of his compositions have now become part of the standard repertoire for the flute, earning their place on required repertoire lists for competitions and courses of study.

He currently has nearly 300 works in print, more than half of which include the flute. Schocker has also composed several musicals, including Far from the Madding Crowd and The Awakening, both of which can be heard on Original Cast Recordings. Both shows were winners of the Global Search for New Musicals in the United Kingdom and were performed in Cardiff and at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as in New Zealand. In New York, The Awakening was the winner of the ASCAP music theater awards. Schocker’s compositions have been recorded by many artists around the world. He teaches at New York University and in his private home studios in New York City and in Easton PA. www.garyschocker.com

Kent Holliday

Kent Holliday

Composer

Holliday is a retired professor emeritus of Music and Humanities at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, where he taught for 43 years since 1974. Previously he was an associate professor at the University of Colorado in Pueblo and Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. He received his B.S. degree in Music and Philosophy from Hamline University in Minnesota in 1962, and his Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1964 and 1968 respectively, as a music theory and composition student of Paul Fetler and Dominick Argento.

Holliday did postgraduate work at Dartmouth College, the University of New Hampshire, and in Paris. He continued piano study with Zygmund Dygat in Paris, and composition studies with Pietro Grossi at the Studio di Fonologia S2FM in Florence and Witold Szalonek at the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin.

A recipient of numerous awards from the Virginia Music Teachers Association, the Aliénor Harpsichord Awards, the New Music Delaware Competition, and the Barto Competition for best piano work with a literary reference, Holliday also received the ASCAPLUS award for the SCI recording of his work, Tango Exótico. 

His book Reproducing Pianos Past and Present was published in 1989 by Mellen Press.

Andrea Clearfield

Andrea Clearfield

Composer

Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer who has written more than 150 works for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations. Clearfield creates deep, emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges. Recent works are inspired by Tibetan music fieldwork that she conducted in the Nepalese Himalaya. She was appointed the Steven R. Gerber Composer in Residence with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia for their 2018-19 season. She is a 2020 recipient of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage International Artist Residency, was named the 2020 The David Del Tredici Residency Fellow at Yaddo, and was awarded a 2020 Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico Fellowship.

She is currently 2020-2022 Composer-in-Residence with National Concerts at Carnegie Hall. Her first opera, MILA, Great Sorcerer, to libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden, was presented at the acclaimed NYC Prototype

Festival in January, 2019. Clearfield was awarded a 2017 Independence Foundation Fellowship, a 2016 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and Fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, American Academy in Rome, Yaddo, Copland House, and the MacDowell Colony among others. As a performer, she played keyboards with the Relâche Ensemble for 25 years and had the great honor of performing with the Court of the Dalai Lama. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Recording Academy/GRAMMY’s Philadelphia Chapter. A strong advocate for building community around the arts, she is founder and host of the renowned Salon featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance, and world music since 1986. www.andreaclearfield.com

Nicole Chamberlain

Nicole Chamberlain

Composer

Having abandoned her previous career as a web animator and designer, Chamberlain now balances her time composing, performing, and teaching. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Music Composition from the University of Georgia and is the recipient of numerous flute composition awards as well as achieving increased attention in wider compositional circles. Together with her husband, she manages their own independent music publishing company, Spotted Rocket Publishing. “Being a virtuoso flutist herself has informed her ability to write for the instrument with thrilling facility and endearing charm.” (Gramophone Magazine) www.nikkinotes.com

Frederic Hand

Frederic Hand

Composer

World renown composer, guitarist, and lutenist Frederic Hand has been hailed by Guitar Review as “…one of today’s most fascinating composers, able to weave together a variety of influences, from jazz to Dowland to the avant-garde.” As a performer, Hand’s concert programs feature his own works, bringing him renown as both a GRAMMY nominated and EMMY-winning television composer and recording artist. Noted for his unique performances of early music, Hand is the creator and director of Jazzantiqua, a group The New York Times has described as “scintillating and brilliant.”

Hand arranged and performed the theme from the Academy Award-winning film, Kramer vs. Kramer, which led to the best-selling recording Baroque and on the Street (CBS). His composition Prayer, recorded by John Williams, was nominated for a GRAMMY award. Hand’s recordings include Jazzantiqua and Heart’s Song on the Music Masters label, and Trilogy, an album of solo guitar music released by the Musical Heritage Society. He recently received the Samuel Sanders Award from the Classical Recording Foundation for his recording of Places of the Spirit with flutist Paula Robison.

He has performed as a guest artist with the Mostly Mozart Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Waverly Consort, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, among others. Hand, who has been the appointed guitarist and lutenist with the Metropolitan Opera since 1984, was chosen to perform in the Metropolitan Opera’s inaugural chamber music series at Carnegie Hall in 1999. He has performed onstage with Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, conducted by James Levine.

Hand’s versatile playing and creative improvisations may be heard on the scores of numerous films, including those starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Robert DeNiro in This Boy’s Life, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer, and Sean Connery in The Next Man. His televised performances include appearances with Meg Ryan, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Heche. He has also performed on the Broadway stage with Maximillian Schell in John Osborne’s A Patriot for Me.

Hand’s original scoring for television includes Sesame Street, As the World Turns, and The Guiding Light, for which he was awarded an EMMY. Over one dozen volumes of his original compositions and arrangements are published worldwide through G. Schirmer, Theodore Presser, Cherry Lane, and Mel Bay.

Hand’s tours throughout North America and Europe have been met with the highest critical acclaim. He has taught masterclasses and given residencies at the New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Cleveland Institute of Music, Emory University, University of California at Santa Barbara, Colorado State, Miami University, and University North Carolina.

A graduate of the Mannes College of Music, Hand studied in England with Julian Bream on a Fulbright scholarship. Formerly head of the guitar departments at SUNY Purchase and Bennington College, he presently serves on the faculty of Mannes College New School for Music.

Katherine Hoover

Katherine Hoover

Composer

Katherine Hoover, composer, flutist, and poet was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards throughout her distinguished career. Her works for orchestra, chamber groups, and soloists have been widely recorded and published by Theodore Presser and her own Papagena Press. Her Kokopeli for flute alone has sold over 13,000 copies and been performed world-wide. Her flute concerto, Four Winds, was premiered with Mark Sparks at the National Flute Association Convention in Washington DC in 2014 to a standing ovation. It has since been performed by Bonita Boyd at the Masterwork Festival and by Amy Porter with the Michigan Philharmonic. Hoover’s Requiem for the Innocent was recently recorded and presented by the New York Virtuoso Singers, with brass, organ, and percussion at New York’s famed Trinity Church.

There have been over 60 performances of her compositions by orchestras including the Long Beach CA, Harrisburg, Fort Worth, and Santa Fe Symphonies, and chamber ensembles including the Colorado Quartet, the Eroica Trio, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the Dorian and Sylvan Quintets, and the Amherst Saxophone Quartet. Soloists such as cellist Sharon Robinson, pianists Christopher Taylor, Anne-Marie McDermott, Joseph Kalichstein, and Mirian Conti, flutists Julius Baker, Carol Wincenc, Eugenia Zukerman, and jazz clarinet virtuoso Eddie Daniels have all featured her work in their performances.

Hoover conducted the premiere of her Night Skies for large orchestra with the Harrisburg Symphony in 1994. In the January 1997 issue of Classical Pulse Magazine (Tower Records), music critic Leslie Gerber picked Hoover’s Quintet Da Pacem (Koch Classics label) as one of the five best recordings of 1996. In March 2011, the Michigan Philharmonic premiered her Turner Impressions to a full house and standing ovation. In March of 2013, the New York Flute Club sponsored a celebration concert of her work.

Hoover attended the Eastman School of Music, earning her undergraduate degree in Music Theory and her Performer’s Certificate in Flute, studying with Joseph Mariano and William Kincaid. As a flutist, she has given concerto performances at Lincoln Center and performed with ballet and opera companies in New York’s major halls. She has played numerous recitals, both live and on radio and television, and recorded solo and chamber repertoire for the Arabesque, Leonarda, CRI, Grenadilla, and Opus One record labels.

She holds a Master’s Degree in Music Theory from the Manhattan School, blazing a trail for other women in composition in an era heavily dominated by men in the field. She taught flute in the Juilliard Preparatory Department, and Music Theory at the Manhattan School of Music. Her book of poems, This Way About was published in 2015 by I Universe as an Editor’s Choice book. She was a Member Laureate of the international women’s music fraternity, Sigma Alpha Iota.

Hoover passed away unexpectedly in 2018. Her husband of 33 years, Richard Goodwin, and son Norman Schwab and his family are preserving her legacy by cataloging her vast compositional output which was still unpublished at the time of her death.

Harvey Sollberger

Harvey Sollberger

Composer

Performers of Sollberger’s compositions are a veritable who’s who of contemporary music. Pierre Boulez, Gunther Schuller, Bruno Maderna, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, Tanglewood Festival, and a wide array of contemporary music ensembles and international festivals have all championed his work. Holding degrees from the University of Iowa and Columbia University, his honors include the Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, two Guggenheim Fellowships and commissions from the Fromm, Naumburg and Koussevitzky Foundations, Music from Japan, Speculum Musicae, the New York New Music Ensemble, the NEA, and various state arts councils.

Sollberger co-founded the Group for Contemporary Music in 1962 and has led new music ensembles at the Manhattan School of Music, Indiana University, and the University of California, San Diego. He taught at Columbia University from 1965-1982 and the Manhattan School of Music from 1972-1982. He has served as Resident Composer at the American Academy in Rome and Composer-in-Residence with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and Red Cedar Chamber Music. He resides in Strawberry Point IA. www.harveysollberger.com

Alan Bise

Alan Bise

Producer and Recording Engineer

Alan Bise is a GRAMMY Award winning producer and recording engineer. He is the chief classical producer of Azica Records and works for many clients and labels across the world. His recordings have received four GRAMMY nominations and have appeared on the Billboard Classical chart and Amazon best-sellers list. He studies the evolving interests of young listeners and uses his own love of rock ‘n’ roll to help create unique and appealing classical projects.

Bise is Director of Recording Arts and Services at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a faculty member in the Audio Recording Degree Program. He is the owner of Thunderbird Records, a label dedicated to releasing musical works of contemporary American Indians.

Known for his substantial collaborative gifts, Bise produced the GRAMMY winning record Play performed by guitarist Jason Vieaux, chosen as the 2015 Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In addition to his four GRAMMY Nominations, he has garnered Latin GRAMMY Nominations and Native American Music Awards. His recording of the Brentano String Quartet, Late Beethoven, Vol. 1 was selected as a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice.”

Passionate about new audience development, Bise created and produced “Offbeat,” a successful radio show that gives its listeners an insider’s look into the world of classical music. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bise has produced records for Azica, Decca, Naxos, Albany/Troy, EMI/Universal, Summit, AEON, Crystal, PARMA, and others as well as movie soundtracks for worldwide release.

Bise serves as Broadcast Producer and Recording Engineer for several important music competitions and is a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the Audio Engineering Society.

Notes

Duo Sequenza

Yes-Its-Still-A-Thing_Notes-1

Duo Sequenza

Reflecting on her 1990 composition, composer Deirdre Lynds writes, “People often ask me about the titles of the piece and individual movements; what they mean and where I got them. It’s a good question, and it feels strange, because this is the first time I’ve titled a piece in this way. Most of my works are called things like ‘Guitar Studies 1 – 5.’ I’m becoming interested in titles now because they communicate a lot about a composer’s beliefs and feelings, and what they think about when they write music. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to communicate concrete ideas through instrumental music. I don’t think of this piece as programmatic in the sense of action being implied, but more like the titles form an emotional roadmap of the music.”

“I’ve always wanted to write film scores, because I tend to write music which is evocative of a specific mood. John Doe’s Running isn’t about a real person running; it’s about the general concepts of chase and flight, of feeling trapped and trying to get away, going through that process.”

“These things are on my mind because modern society is full of people in internal conflict; people who feel trapped by the circumstances of their lives. They aren’t connected to anything; don’t believe in anything. They’d like to change that but it’s hard. It’s almost impossible to redefine yourself, to go against a society you’re a product of… these things are on my mind when I write music. Struggle is important to me because it’s universal, as are the strong emotions that accompany it. Music is a good vehicle for expressing those things.”

“In the first movement, I want you to feel chased; the pace should be frantic because you really need to get away. The middle movements take you through less frenetic moments when the emotions come out: despair, fear, sadness. The third movement in particular is intended to have a wistful quality; a yearning, a longing for something better. The chase is on again in the fourth movement, which closes on a somber note because you don’t get away. Whatever the chase symbolizes, you ultimately can’t escape. Which probably says a lot about my views on people’s ability to change or change anything around them. But we can’t all be optimists.”

Here is a vintage audio recording of Duo Sequenza performing this work live at the Bar Harbor Music Festival’s New Composers Concert in 1992.

— Debra Silvert

Gary Shocker, Paul Bowman, and Debra Silvert are less than a year apart in age, and we can well recall our puzzlement when those mysterious barcodes began to appear on all sorts of products! Inspired by that memory and his irresistible urge to create a pun referencing François Couperin’s Les Barricades Mystèrieuses, Schocker playfully named this engaging work after this now ubiquitous sight. This set of three pieces is so original with just the right amount of capriciousness, one of our audience members dubbed it as “Shockeresque!”

Making liberal use of suspensions in the guitar writing as found in Couperin’s work, Schocker included bitonality similar to that found from early 20th composers such as Faure, and especially Stravinsky. Bowman was moved to reference the re-orchestration of Four Russian Songs (1953) for soprano, flute, harp, and guitar. This influenced his interpretation and choice of fingerings in the third movement, especially in the opening chords of A Major to G Major with the A pedal point. “I found this to be evocative of the harp part in Stravinsky’s Tilim Bom from his Four Russian Songs,” writes Paul. “Holding and sustaining the suspensions comes from my listening to many leading classical guitar interpretations of the Couperin “Mysterious Barricades” – the barricade can represent the lurking harmonic ground, which is always present.”

— Debra Silvert

Premiered in 2008 by flutist David Jacobsen and guitarist Robert Trent in the Recital Salon of the Squires Student Center of Virginia Tech, these pieces were written in Spring 2007 while composer Kent Holliday was teaching in Riva San Vitale, Canton of Ticino, Switzerland.

Inspired by the same magnificent vistas as many artists, poets, and musicians of previous centuries, Holliday wrote his Four Romantic Songs Without Words with his own wife in mind. This “music is what feelings sound like” when beholding the majestic mountains, clear blue lakes, and quaint valleys found in Ticino. The incomparably lovely lakeshore of Lake Como in the northern Italian towns of Bellagio, Tre Mezzo, and Cernobbio further stirred the composer, particularly since Cernobbio hosted a performance by none other than Franz Liszt at Villa d’Este in the mid 19th century.

— Debra Silvert

Andrea Clearfield’s song cycle Farlorn Alemen was commissioned by Israeli soprano Raya Gonen in 2008 for soprano and piano. The work is set to texts by Sima Yashonsky-Feitelson who documented her life in the Kovno Ghetto of Lithuania in a booklet of poems she wrote in Yiddish. She was just 16 years old when she lost her family during World War II. Her young husband was taken to a forced labor camp nearby, in which all of the Kovno Ghetto Jews were believed shot. Feitelson’s writings bear witness to Holocaust atrocities, and her feelings of fear, loss, and doubt as to whether she would ever see her husband again. “Farlorn Alemen” is the first movement of the song cycle which Clearfield was inspired to revise for alto flute and guitar in 2015 for Duo Sequenza. Despite the poet’s certainty that her husband had been murdered, Feitelson eventually found her husband in Israel.

The original text of the Yiddish poem is translated here by Raya Gonen:

Losing Everyone 
Do you know what it means to be alone?
Can anyone understand my heart’s pain?
Losing mother, father, husband and friend
Whom can I turn to today?
My heart is now bleeding from pain
My eyes can shed no more tears
Everything in me has turned into stone from anguish
Together with them, I’ll never be again.
I will never know anymore the happiness
which I felt only a few weeks ago.
I have no mother, father, husband anymore.
Is there still any happiness reserved for me in the world?
Will I never see them again, then?
Is my life lost forever?
Will I ever hear the words “I love you” anymore?
Will my life story thus remain empty forever?

In Israel, Feitelson and her husband reunited with friends from the ghetto, including the parents of soprano Raya Gonen. As a token of their friendship, Feitelson gave an autographed copy of her poems to Gonen’s parents. Upon reading these, Gonen felt compelled to be able to sing them and commissioned Clearfield to set them to music for Gonen’s touring Holocaust songs program. Gonen premiered the complete song cycle at Monmouth University in 2008, and a choral arrangement was premiered by the Harmonium Choral Society in 2014. Duo Sequenza premiered the composer’s alto flute and classical guitar arrangement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, May 4, 2016 at the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso IN.

— Debra Silvert

Nicole Chamberlain composed this work for her own duoATL with guitarist Brian Luckett. Her use of rhythm throughout the piece is decidedly jazz influenced; in the words of Luckett, “a little swing, a little stop time.” As a flutist-composer, Chamberlain makes decidedly good use of extended flute techniques, including the flutter tongue, altissimo register, and jet whistle. In one section of the work, which she describes as a “broken waltz; that is a waltz in quadruple time,” the melody is given to the guitar, accompanied by multiphonics in the flute. Chamberlain features unusual harmonies to good effect and gives each part soloistic as well as ensemble challenges. Her use of open chord voicings in the guitar writing and generous use of silence contribute much to this exotic piece. The work was premiered by duoATL at Agnes Scott College in 2008.

— Debra Silvert

This collection of four movements was inspired by Samuel Barber’s Excursions for Piano, Op. 20 and can be counted among Hand’s earliest compositions; its first and third movements were written when he was only 17 years old. The fourth movement was written somewhat later to mark the college graduation of a classmate, with the second movement materializing another year later to complete the set. Its revision by the composer in 2017 attests to its musical endurability. Of Hand’s compositions for guitar, French classical guitarist and composer Alexandre Lagoya has written, “his knowledge of the instrument enables him to achieve effects which are absolutely remarkable. Hand possesses a magnificent talent which touches me profoundly.”

— Debra Silvert

Of this beloved suite, the composer wrote, “Medieval Suite was inspired by characters and events described in Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, a history of 14th century France. It was a bitter, violent century of extensive wars, and Tuchman sees it as something of a reflection of our own. The fourteenth century was a low point for the Catholic Church with warring Popes in Rome and Avignon, and ‘The Drunken Friar’ was apparently a common sight. In this movement, I have freely adapted and embroidered a Gregorian chant and quoted a well-known round of the time, Sumer is acumin in.”

— Debra Silvert

Named for the great Italian avant-garde flutist Servino Gazzelloni and legendary jazz saxophonist/flutist Eric Dolphy, this one movement work, composed by Harvey Sollberger in 2008, honors these legendary musicians with its fusion of classical and jazz idioms. It calls for extensive improvisation, particularly for the flutist.

There are many interesting points of connection between Duo Sequenza and this particular work. Sollberger wrote the piece to be played by himself and Paul Bowman who premiered it in 2008 at the University of California, San Diego where Paul was working on his D.M.A. in Contemporary Performance. Harvey and Paul gave additional performances at the Villa Aurelia at the American Academy in Rome and at the Midwest Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University prior to Sollberger’s retirement from flute performance.

Duo Sequenza, named after Luciano Berio’s ground-breaking series of solo pieces titled Sequenza, had discontinued its concertizing beginning in 1993, finally returning to the concert stage in 2015. Sequenza I for solo flute was dedicated to Servino Gazzelloni who was very much admired by Berio. Gazzelloni was one of the major teachers of Silvert’s principal teacher, Mary Louise Poor, as well as a life-long inspiration to Sollberger as a flutist. Fluent in Italian, he most recently translated Gazzelloni’s biography into English.

Eric Dolphy was a serious connoisseur of classical music, especially the avant-garde style of Gazzelloni. He visited Edgard Varèse at his home, and performed that composer’s Density 21.5 for solo flute (dedicated to Gazzelloni) at the Ojai Music Festival in 1962.

— Debra Silvert

Explore more albums in this series

Yes… It’s A Thing!