voice+ 1 inst or tape playback non-keyboard

Composer's note:
The Line Between was written with an enormous amount of flexibility and rhythmic freedom in mind; not a lot of concern for strict synchronicity between voice and tape within phrases. The music allows the singer to be free within the bounds of sounds which are, by necessity, fixed. The lack of strict rhythmic correlation creates a sense of “communal prayer” which is heard very clearly at several points (perhaps most notably in the final minute).

There are many moments (the very first phrase, for example) where the singer has a great deal of freedom in tempo; often the tape part emerges without a clear beginning from the singer’s pitch. In such cases—and, really, throughout the piece—the singer is encouraged to treat a phrase’s internal rhythms with some freedom. Again, the composer is drawing on the aural image of prayer chants; both the variation one might hear as different chanters lead a prayer, and the heterophony that emerges as a group chants ‘together.’

Part of the Perspectives of Mew Music/Open Space Milton Babbitt Memorial project

A setting for soprano and computer-synthesized sound of three poems by the American poet Amy Lowell (1974-1925), cast in a single movement of 17 to 18 minutes in duration. Composed in 2009 for soprano Patricia Sonego.

A multi-sound media piece for amplified soprano and 4-track tape, later transferred to CD. The live vocal materials are derived from parts of poems by Aldous Huxley, Anne Ridler, H.D.,and James Stevens. The solo part is notated largely with graphic and proportional notation, and requires vocal gestures and special articulations of the texts throughout. The tape part consists of electronically altered tracks of recorded vocal montages such as: reportage, breathing, children, actors, pop music, laughter, cries, commercials, choruses, as well as electronic drones and rhythms. The piece is a kind of metaphor for the massed voices of humanity, as well as the voice of the unborn, pleading for safe harbor from all that is to come. The vocal part is very challenging, and requires a wide expressive and emotional range.

see 'SONGS'

Setting of 'Valedictory' by L. E. Kramer