DUOS

Violin

Sonata for Violin and Piano

Rhapsody for Violin and Piano (Violin and Piano)

Six Duos for Two Violins (After Bartok)

Stories From My Favorite Planet (Violin, Piano, and Reader)

Aria for a Calmer World (Violin and Piano)
(also for Viola, Clarinet, Cello, or Horn and Piano)

Maitri (“Loving Kindness”) (Violin and Piano Left Hand)

Heart of the World (Violin and Piano)

Flute

Fantasy for Flute and Piano

Flute Sonata (Flute and Piano)

Cello

Song for Dark Times (Cello and Piano)

Double Bass

Bass Bagatelles (Double Bass and Piano)

Bass Vocalise (Double Bass and Piano)

TRIOS

Fanfares for Three Trumpets

Rings of Saturn (Flute, Violin, Piano)

Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano

Horn Trio (Violin, Horn, Piano)

Paleface (Violin, Cello, Piano)

Whack-A-Mole USA (Flute, Viola, Double Bass)

Furnace Creek Nocturne (Two ethnic winds, Percussion)

QUARTETS

String Quartet No. 1

String Quartet No. 2

Piece for Eve (String Quartet)

Orbit E (Flute or Violin, Clarinet, Cello, Piano)

Mulholland Fantasies (Violin, Viola, Cello, and Piano)

Woodwind Quartet

Change of Heart (Baritone, Harp, Cello, Organ)

ARIA FOR A CALMER WORLD
Op. 88

Program Notes

Meditative instrumental song to provide serenity in our stressful world. Makes a satisfying concert opener. I notice audiences tend to sigh collectively at the end. 

This small work keeps finding new homes. It was initially a concert opener for violinist Mitchell Newman to introduce my Daniel Pearl Foundation commission Stories From My Favorite Planet, itself a larger piece protesting terrorism through a musical journey that included readings from Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl's articles. LA Jewish Symphony conductor Noreen Green commissioned an orchestration for solo violin, harp, and strings as part of a larger work titled Canopy of Peace that included songs on meditations written by renowned rabbi and peace advocate Harold M. Schulweis.After the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, the Los AngelesYouth Orchestra performed it as a prayer to end violent ideologies. Later that year, an organizer for a benefit concert to the victims of the San Bernardino 2015 terrorist attacks asked to include the piece.

Aria For A Calmer World is available in these formats:
solo violin with string orchestra and harp
violin and piano
viola and piano
cello and piano
double bass and piano
flute and piano
clarinet in B flat and piano
French horn and piano

VIOLIN SONATA
OP. 1

Program Notes

This one movement sonata-allegro was composed in the senior year of my Bachelor's degree at UCLA. It's a lush and virtuosic piece in the late Romantic style in G minor structured in a chromatic ascending scale so that the section go harmonically G-Ab-A-Bb-B-C-C#-D. The piece was premiered in Boston quite successfully, but has yet to be performed again. The Boston Globe wrote:  

To be present was to be reminded again that today's music speaks in many different voices, some of them intent on sounding like yesterday's.  Russell Steinberg's lush and warmly romantic Violin Sonata could have come right out of the mid to late-19th century; its expressive vocabulary, which manages to avoid anachornism or camp, might have appealed to such virtuosi as Jan Kubelik or Eugene Ysaye.

RHAPSODY FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO
Op. 12

Program Notes

This rhapsody was my first composition in Leon Kirchner’s Harvard seminar. I was rebelling from the “strict diet” of atonality that Arthur Berger had enforced on my writing while at the New England Conservatory of Music. Kirchner seemed open to freer expression. I dared to write a romantic rhapsody in G minor. At the time, it was viewed as an imbecilic idea. Kirchner was surprisingly intrigued with my struggles structuring the piece. At one seminar, he said to the class he could take any of the student sketches he heard that day and finish them quickly in his office. But not my piece. He really wasn’t sure he understood what it wanted to be. I took that as strong encouragement I was on to something.

MAITRI (“LOVING KINDNESS”)
Op. 53

Program Notes

Written for Mitchell and Kim Newman as a delayed anniversary present, this piece is scored for violin and piano left-hand. The piano provides a sonorous background, often with the pedal held down, for the lyricism of the violin, frequently in its highest register. The title “Maitri” is a Buddhist term translated as “loving-kindness,” an entreaty to embrace our essential nature, rather than feeling we have to become something (or someone) else in order to achieve a projected ideal. Kim’s paralysis on one side of her body has not kept her from continuing as a pianist and sensitive artist. Witnessing the tenderness of the two together was inspiring and I tried to express that musically with this improvisatory fantasy.

"...loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to change ourselves... ...It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest... ...Inquisitiveness or curiousity involves being gentle, precise, and open - actually being able to let go and open."

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness

Six Violin Duos (after Bartok)
OP. 23

Program Notes

The point of departure for my six violin duos was a performance I heard of Bartok’s work in the same genre. The sheer sound of just two violins achieving an orchestral depth and variety of color long remained in my ears. I composed each duo with a specific tone color in mind. The first emphasizes the percussive energy of rosined bows digging into the strings. The second is a gentle lullaby with harmonics (bell tones produced by gently touching the string). The third uses mutes and obsessively, almost desperately, explores the inside of a repeated figure. Eventually the anxiety intensifies to the point of noise as the violins play behind the bridges of their instruments. The fourth duo is a light dance of arpeggios produced by the violins gliding the bows over all the strings. The fifth is a more complicated, mysterious study that exploits the special rasp of the bow played on or near the violin bridge. A gruff and energetic dance—my version of a Hungarian Hoedown—completes the set.  It’s a kind of mad combination of Hungarian folk dance and country fiddlin’.

 Stories From My Favorite Planet:
A Musical Tribute to Journalist Daniel Pearl
OP.48

Program Notes

I.         Music: Overture
II.        Article: Going to the Top Won’t Get You to Bottom of Bureaucracy
Music: Bureaucracy Runaround
III.      Article: Search for Mercy Ends in Tears on Quiet Kosovo Street
Music: Tears in Kosovo
 IV.      Article: Missing Violin’s Case: The Finder Fiddles While Losers Sue
Music: Missing Violin Tango
 V.       Article: Underground Trade: Much-Smuggled Gem Helps Bin-Laden Supporters
Music: Tanzanite Tarantella
VI.       Article: Daniel Pearl Murderes
Music: Elegy
 VII.     Article: Registry Saga, Part 2: Intrepid Reporter-Driver Outlasts Chief
Music: Epilogue

On an intuitive hunch, filmmaker Aviva Kempner urged me to meet Daniel Pearl’s parents. During a wonderful impromptu evening together, the Pearls captivated me with stories of Danny’s humor and insight. I had already known that both of us had grown up in Encino and attended Birmingham High School. What I didn’t know was that Danny himself was an accomplished violinist and that his passion to play music helped him establish networks of friends wherever he went. How fascinating that Danny’s curiosity and brilliant journalism led him from humble Encino to the central nexus of world politics. The result of our meeting was “Stories From My Favorite Planet,” The piece intertwines readings from five articles published in At Home in the World, into a musical tapestry that portray Danny’s compassion as well as his sense of the ridiculous.

 We begin with a musical overture that represents Danny’s drive from California to Massachusetts for his first job at the North Adams Transcript. In the first article, a young Danny delivers a hilarious indictment against the bureaucracy of the Registry of Motor Vehicles. A melancholy violin soliloquy precedes the next article, a powerful Wall Street Journal story set in Kosovo where Danny tries to discover if any Serb and Albanian friendships still remain amidst the war. Perhaps Danny’s most humorous article concerns the rediscovery of a UCLA-owned Stradivarius violin that fell off the roof of someone’s car, but whose new owner is loathe to return it! Musically, I couldn’t resist setting this movement as a tango. The climax of the piece is a musical tarantella that prepares one of Danny’s darkest stories  detailing Osama Bin Laden’s gem smuggling trade in Africa. Here Danny discovers how strongly Islamic fundamentalists desire to kill Americans, eerily anticipating his own fate. In the musical elegy that follows, I composed a ‘ghost’ version of the earlier tango.

 Danny Pearl’s wit would not stand for a depressing conclusion, so we end as we began, with a sequel to the first article in Massachusetts. Danny gloats that he has outlasted his “tormentor,” the chief of the Motor Vehicle Registry, only to learn that you can’t beat City Hall! “

 Stories From My Favorite Planet” was commissioned by the Daniel Pearl Foundation for the second annual worldwide Daniel Pearl Music Day.

Duration: 12 Minutes

Instrumentation: Violin and Piano

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Duration: 9 Minutes

Instrumentation: Flute and Piano

Duration: 12 minutes

Instrumentation: Flute and Piano

Movements: 3

Duration: 12 minutes, 5 movements

I. Appassionata
II. Allegretto Scherzando
III. Lightly Dancing
IV. Adagio lontano e cantabile
V. Presto

Instrumentation: Double Bass and Piano (with either solo or regular tuning)

Commissioned by: James Rapport

Duration: 5 minutes

Instrumentation: Double Bass and Piano

Duration: 10 Minutes (one movement)

Instrumentation: Violin, Flute, and Piano

TRIO FOR CLARINET, CELLO, AND PIANO
OP. 16

Program Notes

Clarinet Trio is a one movement work with three distinct sections. A high, furious trill initiates and propels the energetic first section. As the pace becomes more frenzied, the instruments race out of control and abruptly rest. The following middle section, at a slower tempo, reviews previous ideas in a distant and fragmented context. The instruments use special effects (key clicking, multiphonics, bowing behind the bridge, string plucking, etc.) and play out of time with each other. A cello cadenza connects the material to a quiet recapitulation which is more a remembrance than a restatement of the opening textures. The primary theme now is reflective and lyrical (it was harsh and jagged initially). The piece ends distantly with a high trill-like figuration in the piano.

paleface: trio for violin, cello, and piano

op. 81

Program Notes

Paleface: The Myths Underlying the American Narrative
for piano trio and video projection

I. Wild West

II. Action Hero

III. Into Night

Inspired by the acclaimed paintings of New York “psychological-pop” artist Jerry Kearns, Paleface explores the persistence of the American hero myth, even as it breaks down on every level in our contemporary society. It begins with the Western cowboy mythos— horses, cowboys, folk songs and church hymns (Jesus plays a lurking role in the piece), even a gun fight. Then it jumps to the varied 20th century heroes who struggle and triumph over dark forces—detectives from pulp comics and film noir, the secret agent, and the muscled action hero. Paleface concludes with all these icons now as phantoms, struggling in the night to cohere and make sense of a world they no longer can possibly describe. They ultimately all go to church and fade away to a ghost gospel choir.

The musical style of Paleface is contemporary classical with an Americana quality influenced by Ives, Copland, and George Crumb. In the Wild West movement, the pianist taps inside the piano to evoke distant galloping horses. All three instruments create a collage of a dozen folksongs and church hymns. The Action Hero movement has dissonant chase music, a jazzy “secret agent” tune, frantic blues, and…kazoos. The kazoo, an American invention, seemed the perfect voice for the heroes Kearns envisions: ripped, brawny, puffed up, yet unable to touch the ground. Both the musicians and audience participate in the fun.

Sometimes in synchrony, other times antiphonal, the video projection is an equal integrated partner with the music. Created by Amanda Tiller, the video pans slowly to reveal details and layers in Kearns’ paintings. The idea is for the relationship to be contrapuntal, music and image trading off between foreground and background.

TRIO FOR VIOLIN, HORN, AND PIANO
Op. 79

Program Notes

To write a trio for French horn, violin, and piano, first you have to love the Brahms trio (not to men􀀛on the Lige􀀛 trio!). Second, you have to forget that you’ve ever even heard it! No way to compete with that sublimity. Instead, I wrote a four movement trio that sounds nothing like the Brahms, but uses his favorite wri􀀛ng device, one he learned from Beethoven. It’s what Schoenberg called “developing varia􀀛on”—developing music as if it is plant unfurling from a seed, in con􀀛nual self-discovery and evolu􀀛on from its opening idea. The French horn opens my trio with a fanfare, and most of the music in the next four movements sprout from the energy, rhythms, and contours of that fanfare.

This first movement is a big sprawling sonata, drama􀀛c with many moods. It becomes obsessed with the fanfare to the point of referencing Beethoven’s fi􀀫h symphony, a work most famously obsessed with a single mo􀀛ve. The second movement is an expressive nocturne (night piece) that explores the colors of the ensemble. The pianist reach plays subtle harp effects inside the piano. The horn at one point plays with a mute, and the violin plays harmonics and feathery bow strokes (tremolo). The third movement is a scherzo, marked to be played fast and whispery. The repeated notes from the fanfare now sound dissonant and rather jazzy. The finale is also a dance that transforms the fanfare into a tarantella, all about momentum and virtuosity. It amplifies the horn, violin, and piano almost into a small chamber orchestra.

My horn trio was commissioned by Sierra Ensemble with Janis Lieberman, horn; Randy Weiss, violin; and Marc Steiner, piano. The trio and I collaborated in a crea􀀛ve residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Ins􀀛tute in New Hampshire where we prepared the premiere performance.

FANFARE FOR THREE TRUMPETS
OP. 10

Program Notes

This trumpet fanfare was commissioned for a groundbreaking ceremony on a commercial building in Boston. The cranes nearly smashed the balcony where the trumpets were playing during their performance. The piece is inspired by my love of Medieval composer Perotin's gorgeous diatonic but contrapuntal harmonies.

WHACK-A-MOLE USA
op. 80

Program Notes

Whack-A-Mole USA is a sardonic response to Donald Trump’s gaslighting to deny Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The piece opens with the flute riffing neurotically on the Star Spangled Banner and ultimately gets subsumed by the Russian National Anthem. However, both are fragmented and rhythmically altered to the point that it does not ever rise to full consciousness. I was contemplating that tragic, almost Dadaist moment at the 2018 Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki where Trump stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin and proclaimed to the whole world that he trusted Mr. Putin’s denial of Russian interference more than the conclusions of his own American intelligence agencies.

The surface of Whack-A-Mole USA is all neurosis! In the first section, labelled “Hack Attack,” the flute keeps getting “whacked” by the viola and bass whenever it tries to establish motifs from the Star Spangled Banner. That flows into a second section, “Anxious scampering,” where all three instruments chase each other to exhaustion. The third section, “Normalization,” begins with the bass intoning motifs of the State Anthem of the Russian Federation, warping and bending the flute’s Star Spangled Banner fragments. The viola joins the bass and the flute ultimately submits and joins the other two in the“Whack-A-Mole” motif.

FURNACE CREEK NOCTURNE
Op. 54

Program Notes

Furnace Creek Nocturne, op. 54

I. Setting Sun—cedar flute solo with howler (pre-hispanic flute)

            II. Night Sky Appears—waterphone cadenza

III. Dancing Constellations—shofar fanfare with didjeridu

Furnace Creek is one of two villages in Death Valley National Park. It affords a magnificent view of mountains with every conceivable color, depending on the light. The air is, calm, clean, dry and the evening starlight spectacle is profound. The sound of wind and sense of desolation contribute to a feeling of timelessness and immense space. These ideas may aid the interpretation of this piece, moving from the wind and deep colors of sunset to the onset of evening and appearance of stars.

QUARTETS

String Quartet No. 1
OP. 18

Program Notes

My first string quartet was premiered by the New World String Quartet in Boston and ultimately became my doctoral thesis at Harvard University. Though written as only a single movement, the quartet journeys and converses together through many different worlds of texture and tempo. I was particularly influenced by the sonorities of Alban Berg’s String Quartet op. 3 and Lyric Suite, as well as Bartok’s haunting String Quartet No. 2. My original title was “Nightmares,” but several professors protested saying the music was far too sweet for such a description. You be the judge. 

String Quartet No. 2 
OP. 71

Program Notes

This second string quartet marks my first intentional sequel. Like my first quartet, the second brings together four virtuoso string players who have to play at the top of their game in a single movement of continuous motion and energy. And yes! I’ve doubled the special effects this time around. This quartet has even more pizzicati (string plucking) and anxiety-inducing sul ponticello (bowing on the bridge to create an eerie electronic sound) than the first. It even raises the ante by adding glissandi (slides down the strings). 

PIECE FOR EVE (STRING QUARTET MOVEMENT)
Op. 76

PROGRAM NOTES

I composed this soft, lyrical string quartet movement for my dear friend Eve Cohen. Chamber music was her greatest joy. She was also a bit particular about her instrument, the viola. As her friend Elizabeth Goodmanremarked, “Eve was someone who accepted you completely for who you are—and then tried to get you to play viola!”

Eve was Program Director and viola coach for the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra. She played a critical role helping guide the orchestra into one of the top youth ensembles in Los Angeles. She passed away in November 2012 from cancer, just months before the orchestra had its first performance at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Piece for Eve is to be played luminous and distant, its triadic harmonics a glowing resonance from a once bright star.

ORBIT E
OP. 52

Program Notes

This intense three movement work centers around the note E. Many pieces of classical music use this subtle code. A great example is Beethoven's 7th Symphony, especially the slow movement with its initial melody in the low strings all on the note E. Even contemporary composers, like William Kraft, use the pitch 'E' as an organizing force.

ORBIT E is an abstract, expressive quartet for flute, clarinet, cello, and piano that at its heart is a meditation on an E minor triad. The chord rises and falls, expands and collapses, carving at times an orchestral power and other times an intimate chamber world of color. In the first movement, the instruments break from the chord tentatively, and then with more assurance, playing melodic fragments that explode the texture into a wide range of dynamics and register. Clarinet, violin, and cello have cadenza moments separately and together as a trio. After expending considerable energy, the first movement concludes quietly back to its E minor triad with sustained notes in the clarinet and strings, while the piano hovers with its “sunken version,” E flat minor.

The second movement is a fantasy nocturne that continues the orbits around E minor, only now with much more space between its objects. The added color of glissandi and plucking inside the piano give it a ghostly aura. The pianist in this movement essentially becomes a hybrid harpist-pianist. The mystic plucking and strumming inside the instrument contrasts with other sections in an expansive Romantic playing style.  

 The third movement is marked Furioso, like a buzzing of bees. Only these bees again swirl around E minor. Their fury gives way to a lighter dance in a middle section, but then the music spins out of control. A calm descends that hints back at the iridescence of the ghostly middle movement until the furioso returns and the music propels to an explosive finale.

 Orbit E was originally commissioned both by Michelle Stanley and the Sonora Chamber Ensemble and Ensemble Meitar.

MULHOLLAND FANTASIES (PIANO QUARTET)
OP. 32

Program Notes

Mulholland Fantasies was commissioned by Pacific Serenades and performed by Joanne Pearce Martin (piano), Roger Wilkie (violin), Roland Kato (viola), and David Speltz (cello). Dedicated to Mark Carlson, composer and founder of Pacific Serenades. The piece is an interior journey inspired by Mulholland Drive and the way it divides through the city of Los Angeles. The first 3 movements form a set. The last measures of the first movement repeat as the beginning of the second movement. The last measures of the second movement repeat as the beginning of the the third movement. The fourth slow movement features a high expressive cello solo. The finale is an exuberant piece reflecting my love for the lyricism in Schubert's chamber music.

Change of heart
OP. 14

PROGRAM NOTES
In his Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth refers to his early poem brimming over in exuberance for nature’s beauty, famously proclaiming “The Child is the father of the Man.” Now older, and too well-versed in mortality, he writes “To me the meanest flower that blows can give /Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Change of Heart merges both sentiments in an evocative soundscape that combines a cello, harp, and organ with a baritone singer. A short instrumental prelude introduces “My Heart Leaps Up,” and an instrumental interlude marks the transition to “There Was A Time.”  

For the organist: My specific registrations should be taken only as suggestions. Please make every effort to not to overpower either baritone or the cello and harp.

TEXT (poetry by William Wordsworth)

 I.  Prelude [Instrumental]

II. My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

III.  Interlude [Instrumental]

IV. There Was A Time
(from Intimations of Immortality)

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight. 
To me did seem 
Apparell'd in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it has been of yore: — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day. 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more!

The rainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the rose; 
Waters on a starry night…

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality! 

Another race hath been and other palms are won.

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears; 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
***

Prelude and scherzo for WOODWIND QUARTET
Op. 7

LARGE ENSEMBLES

SUBTERRANEAN DANCE
OP. 30

Program Notes

Subterranean Dance is a 7 minute journey for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, marimba and vibraphone. It traces an arc from a place of high velocity and loudness to a slower, softer, and reflective atmosphere. An explosion of rapid pulses opens the piece in a kaleidoscope of colors. The high energy eventually subsides to a quieter contrapuntal nocturne, first lyrical, and then mysterious (i.e. 'subterranean'). Momentum picks up and the music returns to its initial fast tempo. Yet this second fast section also exhausts itself, dying away to a sad, eerie slow dance and eventually a skeletal violin solo. Defying the tendency for a 'big finish," the lyrical nocturne returns to complete the piece, this time adorned in a hazy halo of ornaments that waft the music to a higher plane.

This piece has been warmly received in performances around the United States, including the HEARNOW Festival in Los Angeles, the Minnesota Symphony Chamber concerts, the Aspen New Music Festival in Colorado, and the June In Buffalo Festival in New York.

WAR PIECE
OP. 13

Program Notes

War Piece

I. Battle
II. Funeral Plain
III. Crows and Flies

War Piece is a 3 movement work for string quartet, flute, and trumpet that has a Prokofievian flavor. The first movement is titled "Battle," and appropriately militaristic. The second movement is "Funeral Plain," elegaic and expressive. The third movement "Crows and Flies" is energetic and sardonic. War Piece is written in a neoclassic style. It was premiered at Harvard University where the audience and performers cheered, while the faculty took me aside the next day and threatened to essentially kick me out of the PhD program for writing such a "backward" tonal piece. That was life in the 1980s.

STRANGE ATTRACTORS
OP. 57

Program Notes

This is my most ambitious composition, placing a classical string quartet and a world music trio in artistic confrontation. The term strange attractors is borrowed from Chaos Theory, suggesting a hidden order to turbulent events. That hidden order reveals symmetries that occur at various scales or frames of reference.  In this music, the perspective of Western music embodied by the string quartet, with its classical rhythms, melodies, and harmonies, grapples with the global perspective embodied by the world music trio called MANY AXES, a group that specializes in primitive, ethnic, and original instruments, producing  sounds that often lie outside the Western canon of scales and phrasing. As the piece unfolds, both groups start to respond to each other and experiment with the other's way of making music. This work marks a new direction in my music that shows my “strange attraction” to unusual sonority and improvisation created within a structured musical articulation. 

Six Movements Played Without Pause

I. Proximity (Full Ensemble)
II. Tonal Attractor (String Quartet)
III. World Attractor (World Music Trio)
IV. Fractals and Chaos (Pairings)
V. Switched Polarity (Full Ensemble)
VI. Universality (Full Ensemble)

Diversions for Brass Quintet
Op. 66

PROGRAM NOTES

The five movements of this brass quintet freely modulate from the festive to the ridiculous and back again. The outer movements, Fanfare and Hi Five, employ a pandiatonic or panmodal harmonic language inspired by the wonderful "collisions" in the 1 2th century organum of Perotin. Both pieces should be played with high energy, but also with a care to balance the chords to createa sense of the harmonic color changing kaleidoscopically. Sarcasm of Youth, the second movement scherzo, is self explanatory. The trombone slides and tuba splats may be "hammed up." The fluttertongue in the final measure, if not obvious, is a concluding fart. The slow movement, The Old God Bowed, uses muted brass for long suspended chordal textures. While still remaining subdued, subtle dynamic fluctuations not indicated in the score might be helpful. Mahler Slightly Stoned is a lighthearted reference to Mahler's fifth symphony scherzo. If Mahler's symphony encompasses the entire world as he famously asserted, then think of this scherzo encompassing roughly a compact-sized parking space in some mini mall lot. The movement should continually feel as if it is modulating out of control.

Duration: 22 minutes

Instrumentation: Flute, Clarinet in Bb, Violin, Cello, Piano, Percussion

Movements: 2
I. City Pulse
2. Nightfall

Performance by New Arts Winds: Marianne Gedigian, fl; Charlyn Bethell, ob; Jennifer Gilman, cl and bcl; Kenneth Pope, horn; James Kirker, bassoon; Russell Steinberg, piano

Duration: 25 minutes

Instrumentation: Piano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet in Bb/Bass Clarinet in Bb, Bassoon, French Horn

Movements: 5
I. Whitecaps
II. Swells I
III. Starlight
IV. Swells II
V. Riptides

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Duration: 12 minutes

Instrumentation: Flute, Oboe, Clarinet in Bb, Bass Clarinet in Bb (with low C extension), Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass

Movements: 2
I. Lento
II. Allegro

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