-Flute Alone-

Flute Alone Flute and Piano Flute Duet Flute Concerto Piccolo Flute and Percussion

January 8
Sonata Op. 16 for Flute Alone
Rudolf Escher

Rudolph Escher, was born on this day in 1912 in Amsterdam. He was a man of many gifts, respected not only as a composer, but also as a theorist, writer, artist and poet. The Sonata, Op. 16 was written in 1949.

Performed by Jennifer Parker-Harley
Recorded by Jeff Francis

February 3
Wind-Song
Sidney Lanier

Born on this day in 1842 in Macon, Georgia, Sidney Lanier was a writer and flutist who was interested in exploring the interrelationship among music, poetry, and nature. More well-known for his poetry, he was a professor of literature at The Johns Hopkins University. Lanier wrote “Wind-Song” in 1874 for his audition with conductor Leopold Damrosch in New York. This piece effectively displays the many facets of virtuoso flute playing in a short, one movement format, ideal for an audition setting.

Performed by Olivia Abernathy
Recorded by Jeff Francis

February 19
Caprice from Four Pieces for Flute Alone
Jindřich Feld

Czech composer Jindrich Feld was born on this day in 1925. His compositions number over two hundred, spanning a wide range of works including chamber music, symphonies, a cantata, and a children’s opera. His works for flute include a concerto written for Jean-Pierre Rampal, a sonata, and the Four Pieces for solo flute. The titles of the Four Pieces are as follows: Méditation, Caprice, Intermède (Hommage à Bartók), and Burlesque.

Performed by Jennifer Parker-Harley
Recorded by Jeff Francis

February 22
Hongroise from Eight Pieces
Lowell Liebermann

Lowell Liebermann was born on this day in 1961. Beloved by flutists for his many works for the instrument, Liebermann’s Eight Pieces for Solo Flute provide vignettes of different musical styles rendered into his unique compositional style. The fifth piece, titled “Hongroise,” is perhaps inspired by Hungarian dances. Josh Stine, the flutist featured on the recording, is a Junior in the Bachelor of Music degree program at USC.

Performed by Joshua Stine
Recorded by Jeff Francis

March 17
Introspective from Sonata
John LaMontaine

Born in Chicago on this day in 1920, John LaMontaine won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Guggenheim Fellowship during his long career. Varied influences can be heard in his works, from sounds of nature to jazz to medieval music and folk song. He said, “Part of my creed is that you should be interested in everything.” His most popular work for flute, the Sonata, shows his characteristic rhythmic vitality and jazz influence.

Performed by Jennifer Parker-Harley
Recorded by Jeff Francis

March 21
Allemande from Partita in A Minor
J.S. Bach

Born on this day in 1685, J.S. Bach wrote his Partita while he was music director at the Calvinist court of Cöthen. Bach adopted the form of this four-movement work from the French baroque instrumental dance suites. The “Allemande,” no longer danced by the 17th century, is a highly-ornamented introductory movement in a German style.

Performed by Emily Stumpf

April 13
Mollitude
Frederic Rzewski

American composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski was born on this day in 1938. Mollitude for solo flute was composed in 2006 for Molly Barth, founding member of the new music sextet eighth blackbird. Mollitude showcases a wide range of possibilities on the flute from the lowest notes to the highest, fast virtuosic passages followed by extremely soft and delicate harmonic tones, and percussive sounds marked in the score as “(stomp)”

Performed by Lauren Watkins (DMA ’16)

May 7
Refractions: on Escher
Richard Drehoff Jr.

Richard Drehoff Jr. is a Baltimore-based composer and close personal friend of mine. Richard’s music asks performers to explore vulnerability, navigate fragile extended techniques, and observe silence as a crucial element of his compositions. In this piece, he writes multi-phonics at the extremes of their playable dynamics that are, as he says, “carved into the rock face” of the surrounding silence. He additionally composes for the solo flute using a double-stave score to impart the interplay of background and foreground in the work as inspired by Escher’s “Day and Night,” which gets projected in the background of any performance. Richard is one of my oldest friends and most frequent collaborators because we work closely together as members of earspace, a NC-based contemporary performance ensemble. Our close relationship and Richard’s unique mix of glowing warmth and unflinching meticulousness made this collaboration extremely fun and rewarding. - Philip Snyder

Performed by Philip Snyder (UofSC MM’15, DMA ‘18)

May 31
Les Folies d’Espagne
Marin Marais

Performed by Jennifer Parker-Harley
Recorded by Jeff Francis

June 18
Caprice No. 6
Anton Stamitz

Anton Stamitz was born on this day in 1750. Stamitz was a violinist and composer who at one time held the title ordinaire de la musique du roi in the King’s court at Versailles. He wrote a large amount of flute music including the collection of 8 Caprices which make up most of the flute’s late-eighteenth-century repertoire alongside Mozart.

Performed by Jennifer Parker-Harley
Recorded by Jeff Francis

August 15
Pièce
Jacques Ibert

Jacques Ibert, born on this day in 1890, was a successful French composer. Pièce, according to an oft-told legend, was supposedly written over the course of a dinner party celebrating the premiere of Ibert’s flute concerto and was sight-read by Marcel Moyse on the same night. Regardless of the legend, this charming solo is a perfect reflection of Ibert’s neo-classical style and represents a large body of work inspired by the master flutist, Moyse.

Performed by Brianna Futch (UofSC MM ‘18)

October 21
East Wind
Schulamit Ran

Shulamit Ran is a Pultizer-Prize-winning, Israeli-American composer and was a long-time professor of composition at the University of Chicago. Winds from the east are used as symbology for deadly or chaotic events in biblical writings and poetry. East winds are also geographically ominous for Ran’s native Israel, originating from the Arabian desert and carrying high gusts and drought. “East Wind” is undoubtedly inspired by this connotation but mixes in moments of calm tranquility among sections marked “wild,” perhaps alluding to the contemplative nature of wind in addition to its disastrous qualities.

Performed by Philip Snyder (UofSC DMA ‘18)

November 11
A Tale of Four Dragons
Fang Man

To celebrate Chinese New Year, today we share a work by Fang Man, a Chinese-born composer. Fang is a prolific composer of both large- and small-scale works, including electro-acoustic music and opera, and she is currently a professor of composition at USC. Her music has been performed by such ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and the Tokyo Philharmonic. Her piece A Tale of Four Dragons, commissioned by Mimi Stillman, is written for a solo flutist who also provides narration of the titular story, an ancient Chinese folktale, between sections of the music. The composition is excerpted for this video.

Performed by Jennifer Parker-Harley, flute and Mike Harley, narrator

December 2
Winter Spirits
Katherine Hoover

Katherine Hoover, born on this day in 1937, is an American composer and flutist living in New York. Winter Spirits is influenced by the sounds of Native American music, specifically the Hopi tribe of the American Southwest. An accomplished flutist herself, Hoover’s music capitalizes on the unique characteristics of the instrument, weaving together themes that are at times playful and at other times soaring.

Performed by Dorion Burkett (UofSC BM)