SONGBIRD.
Opus. 81
Instrumentation: Flute + Piano
Duration: 14 minutes, three movements
Commissioned By: The World Sonata Project 2020: Flute
Cover Art: Sasha Parfenova
PROGRAM NOTE: Songbird
At the beginning of the Covid lockdown in NYC in spring 2020, the sudden quiet encouraged the wildlife to come out of the parks and into the streets and onto rooftops. The result was profound to hear: a magnificent chorus of birdsong that felt like an anthem of hope resounding from their small melodies.
For SONGBIRD, I spent time with field recordings of many different birds, notating their songs and using these as the starting points for the melodies in the first two movements of this work. The names of these birds have been notated in the score above where their melodies appear. Songbirds I firsts met durning my Michigan childhood can be heard in the first movement: mourning doves (I always assumed they were "morning doves" back when I was too young to know what "mourning" was), robins, cardinals while the second movement draws from the lonely, fog-lit cries of loons and whooping cranes.
The final movement is influenced by starling murmurations, a phenomenon wherein thousands of starlings flock together in the sky about an hour before sunset and embark on an aerial dance: the massive flock takes on shape after shape, perhaps to confuse predators into avoiding the area so that the birds may then be safe when they return to their nests for the night. The beauty of these avian beings in the sky at twilight, moving together as they simultaneously merge into myriad designs (sometimes the flock's shape will look like a gigantic bird), has haunted me for a good long while. The piano and flute merge and fly together here also, a kinetic propulsion of sound before indulging in a nighttime lullaby.
When my sister and I were young, our mother taught us to recognize birds by their songs, and I hope that this piece may help do something similar for its audiences; that you may now know who is calling out to you the next time they do.
I'm so grateful to the artists who have commissioned this work; in this odd and dark time, Songbird has been a great source of joy and light for me and I hope that our little piece of music-making will keep amplifying the light of these artists and their audiences for many years to come.
Pre-order the double lp!
duo970 (James Hall, flute, and Susie Maddocks, piano) play Stephanie’s flute chamber music: Songbird, Imogen, Chartreuse, and Sapien
with special guests Tim Gocklin and Becky Kutz Osterberg!
pre-order the complete flute sonatas!
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PDF Score + Part(s) sent via email within 2-3 business days. I’m excited to connect with you!
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I want to meet you! Purchase of this pdf in the 23/24 season comes with a 30 min zoom session, if you’d appreciate that during your rehearsal process. You’ll receive scheduling instructions in the delivery email with your music.
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If you already have a concert date in mind, you’ll receive instructions on sending me concert info in the delivery email with your music.
PROGRAM NOTE: Imogen
Commissioned for Cincinnati Soundbox's inaugural concert in 2015, IMOGEN for flute + piano weaves together several made-up folk songs to tell the stories of three very different Innogen or Ingen, the Old Irish words for maiden. In this piece I return to my Gaelic heritage to find ways to help the piano and flute evoke the bagpipes, bodhrán, celtic harp, and penny whistle. Two of the melodies used in this piece were developed from fragments I've had kicking around in my brain since I made them up when I was twelve. I still remember working on this project in the summer of 2015; in the process of writing down the opening of the first movement, I had a moment of surprise, perhaps even a bit of astonishment: even though that melody had been with me for more than a decade, I’d never seen before what the notes themselves looked like. Chia-Chen Feng and Brianna Matzke brought Imogen to beautiful life in the premiere performance.
PROGRAM NOTE: chartreuse
When Tammy Evans Yonce first approached me about writing a sonata for flute and piano after having already performed my first sonata for the same instrumentation, Imogen, she mentioned the poems of one of her colleagues: Christine Stewart-Nuñez. Christine writes frequently about Hildegard von Bingen and her poem Veriditas struck me deeply and reminded me of things my own mother told me as a child about how the color of life and love was green, not red. "Look at the trees, the grass, aren't they full of life? Isn't it the spring season that gives us both renewed life and green all around?" And so Veriditas stuck with me and with every subsequent going-over of the poem as I began to turn it into music, I was brought closer to seeing the world through Holden's eyes; deeper into the world of seeing through Hildegard's. It was an absolute and total joy writing this piece for an artist I admire greatly and I'm so glad to have had this time to think about Hildegard, while working to bring her to life in this work.
Chartreuse:
The first movement sees Christine Stewart-Nuñez's poem Veriditas set fairly rigidly in the flute part - if you read the poem along with the performance you may be able to see how those syllables fit in to the song of the flute part as the piano accompanies and paints images of different moments from the poem.
Reverie:
The second movement is a snapshot of a few moment's in Hildegard's life and her world; a few moments in prayer, a few moments summoning courage for her life's unique and difficult spiritual tasks, a few moments fully connected to a powerful life force.... and perhaps even a vision.
Colorwheel:
This movement is a movement of celebration; Hildegard's world didn't just include chartreuse greens, so this movement was written to be an exciting, powerful ride of rhythm and color and a showcase of many of the flute's unique colors and abilities.
PROGRAM NOTE: SAPIEN
When flutist Brook Ferguson approached me with this commission for River Oak Chamber Orchestra's 18/19 season, we talked about the season's main theme: "Games People Play". Brooke and I had decided on some sort of celestial piece already, and this fit so well in that trying to figure out humanity's place among these huge bodies of rotating mass may be the ultimate game, just one we haven't quite won yet. SAPIEN takes its inspiration from slow, deep unknown of black holes, the possibilities brought to us by the Higgs Boson "God Particle", and in between, the beautiful and the delicate, the terrifying and the unknown of how our species and the others around us have made it quite this far. I'm so grateful to Brook, Alecia Lawyer, and the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra for commissioning this piece, and I hope you enjoy this ride throughout a part of a gorgeously intricate history (and future) that we still only have glimpses of.
Artist biography.
Sasha Parfenova is a Boston based mixed media artist working primarily in collage. She received her MFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2015. Her work is inspired by the beauty and fragility of the natural world. Using intricately cut images of flora and fauna, hand-drawn or painted elements, found materials, she creates eclectic collages and installations.