Separation Logic is a work for flute and live computer processing. My goal in working  with computers is to extend the sounds and capabilities of instruments by capturing and digitally manipulating their sounds. All of the sounds in this piece are derived from the live performer, giving the player many opportunities for expression, even in the computer-processed sounds. Separation Logic is dedicated to the memory of my friend  John Reynolds (1935 - 2013), and named for a method of reasoning about computer programs that John developed. The term, and John's work, resonate with the formal  aspects of the software used to create this work, and also with the relationship between the flute and computer. Separation Logic was commissioned by flutist Lindsey Goodman.  - Roger Dannenberg

 

David Stock wrote A Wedding Prayer as a gift to my husband and me, and it was premiered during our marriage ceremony on June 26th, 2004 by Walfrid and Sherry Kujala. My husband, Chris Carmean, and I both earned degrees at Duquesne University, where we played in David’s Contemporary Ensemble and took his courses. David founded the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Seattle and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, and many others. He was also a mentor and adopted family member to us both, doing everything he could to support us personally and professionally.  A Wedding Prayer was lost shortly after the premiere, and it was only after David’s death that the score to this heartfelt gem resurfaced thanks to his widow, Celia.  - Lindsey Goodman

 

I Asked You: I first heard Lindsey Goodman play at a new music festival in West Virginia in 2015, and I knew I wanted to write for her. My goal as a composer is always to make my work very personal for the performer. To achieve this, I asked Lindsey nine questions and asked her to record her responses. I then analyzed the recordings to find motivic and rhythmic material in her words. I manipulated sections of her recorded voice to create electronic instruments. I also utilized recordings of her playing and some of her favorite nature sounds to fill out the instrument list. As this was part of my sabbatical project, I also used some of the sounds that I collected from all of the places I have lived. In our initial discussions, we realized we wanted a duet, but our divergent schedules would permit very few performance possibilities, so I created a variable piece that can function as a solo, duet, or any combination in concerto style with one player to the fore. I wanted the solo part to be mostly improvised, to continue with the idea of having the work be personal, so the result is a relatively free work with guideposts throughout to help maintain musical direction. The piece is cast in two movements, “Everything I Love” and “I Play Music.”  - Tony Zilincik

 

Sleep’s Undulating Tide takes its inspiration from Margaret Atwood’s poem, “Variations on the Word Sleep.” Her expressive text reveals desire, intimacy, and longing — “I would like to sleep / with you, to enter / your sleep as its smooth dark wave / slides over my head”. Atwood’s imagery progresses through a dream-like state where she desires to accompany her lover through the beauty of a “lucent / wavering forest of bluegreen leaves” and then into a foreboding darkness “towards the cave where you must descend, / towards your worst fear”. Her continuing journey references Orpheus’s descent into hell to rescue Eurydice by yearning to “become / the boat that would row you back / carefully”. Atwood’s evocative poem ends with a simple yet profound expression to “be the air / that inhabits you for a moment / only”, with its intent to be simultaneously unimportant yet vital.

 

Sleep’s Undulating Tide was commissioned by Lindsey Goodman, and is dedicated to her with appreciation and admiration.  - Elainie Lillios

 

Demon/Daemon: We set about our customary task, unsuspectingly, when something outside our control takes over. It thwarts us, knocking us down every time we try to move forward. Anxiety ensues and accelerates, to the point of exhaustion. Spent, we have no choice but to pay attention to a sorrow we had suppressed. When we embrace it, then let it go, we find our rest. Finally, everything becomes possible.

 

The Demon is the counter-productive, undermining force that lives inside us all. It feeds on us like a parasite, but stops just short of destroying us - after all, it can’t survive without us. The Daemon is the authentic inner voice which supports our vitality and creativity. The two aren’t enemies so much as contrasting characters in a drama we are all obliged to act out. They long to be acknowledged and understood, and, if we ignore them, they stir up trouble.

 

In the score, I’ve marked the milestones of the piece with quotes I encountered while exploring ideas for it:

On anxiety: “No tears, only a heaving incoherence.” - Andrew Solomon

On sorrow: “Not so much evil as suffering and sorrowing.” - Mikhail Vrubel

On rest: “All! All, love and pain and world and dream.” - Gustav Mahler

On possibility: “The visible breath, artificial and serene, of inspiration returning to heights unseen.”   - Stéphane Mallarmé

 

I am grateful to Lindsey Goodman for being such an inspiring collaborative artist and dream performer!  - Linda Kernohan

 

The Line of Purples: The color purple does not exist outside of the mind. It is one of the many aspects of vision that are created by our brains. We see purple when our eyes are presented with colors from both extreme ends of the spectrum. I am fascinated by this and other illusions that our mind's eye creates. Reality is, in the deepest sense, at least partly created by us. It assumes connections based on past experience and creates a world from these. I think our way of listening to and understanding music is very similar, but less held back by “the facts.” When you listen to my piece The Line Of Purples, for flute and pre-recorded electronics, I hope your mind creates its own new reality, as it tries to make sense of the extremes and paradoxes the piece presents. It is dedicated to my dear friend and frequent partner in music, the estimable Lindsey Goodman.  - Randall Woolf

 

“just the mere suspicion of nakedness is enough to focus the mind”

 

I wrote this for my friend, the fabulous flutist Lindsey Goodman, as a birthday suite, but less is more so now it’s a birthday suit....

- Roger Zahab

 

This version of For the Fallen, for amplified flute and electronics, was composed for Lindsey Goodman. The original, for trumpet and electronics, was commissioned by Ivano Ascari. After discussing the project with him, I decided to take my inspiration from, and create the electronics from, recordings of the Capana dei Caduti (Bell for the Fallen) in Rovereto, Italy, his home town. Later called Maria Dolens, the bell was originally cast from cannons melted after World War I, and is one of the largest ringing bells in the world. It is rung daily in memory of the fallen in all wars. While political situations change in their particulars, the presence of war sadly does not. I composed For the Fallen while thinking not only of those who fell in World War I, but also of those who have fallen in war ever since.

 

The flute part sometimes blends with the bell sounds, ringing for the fallen, and, at other times, it rises in mourning, even wild keening, before closing with a sense of resignation. The original bell recordings were kindly provided by engineer Marco Olivotto.

- Judith Shatin