Master's Recital-May 12th, 2014

Winter Sky
-Joseph Turrin

Winter Sky, dedicated to James Pellerite, is a simple, but beautiful piece for Native American flute. The listener can imagine a cold winter night, the stars shining above, and the Aurora Borealis dancing across the sky.

Nesting of Cranes - Wil Offermans

In this piece, the listener is to hear a Western flute emulating a shakuhachi imitating the sounds of cranes. The listener can hear the cawing of cranes and the beating of their wings intermixed with a shakuhachi melody reminiscent of traditional Japanese music. Using several extended techniques, the flutist depicts the life of cranes (an animal revered in Japan as the symbol of a long and happy life). A couple builds a nest, lays eggs, hatches out little cranes and raises them until they are independent. Finally the couple dies. This piece can also be interpreted as the tonal manifestation of the Buddhist concept of compassionate love expressed by the care the cranes give their children.

Flute 3.2.4.
-Adriana Verdie

This piece was composed by Cole Conservatory Professor Adriana Verdie. I got to work closely with her while preparing this piece for my recital. It is meant to sound like two flutes playing in hocket to each other (like a duet, but the two flutes together weave in and out to create the melody). I do not own the images, but they fit the music perfectly.

“When I was asked to write a piece for solo flute, my mind was filled with the warm sound of the Música Andina (music of the Andes) and the vivid image of the sicus [panpipes] indigenous to many Andean people, consisting of a single line of pipes, each of different length, which restricts the performer to a small range of fixed pitches. As the sicu is not tuned in complete scales, pairs of musicians play alternate notes in tight association with one another to obtain a single melody. I have taken this idea and reversed it, by writing a composition that requires one flutist to play two-voice polyphony on the instrument. The three movements of the piece are played without interruption. Each movement is restricted to a specific melodic interval as the generator of the pitch system, and as a base of the mathematical calculations to determine formal proportions, metrical relationships and rhythmic organization. The first movement is a rhythmic elaboration of 3rds (and its compliment, 6ths), characterized for its two-voice setting of ostinatti and melodies in a multi-sectioned arch form. A slower dance-like rhythm employing three different scales combining 2nds (and 7ths) forges the second movement; its gracious timbral shades lead into the third and last movement, based on a system of 4ths (and 5ths), completing the intervallic spectra, again in a fast motion with some reminiscences of the rhythmic profiles of previous movements.”
                                                                                              -Adriana Verdié