Music Entries - 2020 (Window)
I Found Nemo
Original Composition
Scott Turner
"I Found Nemo" was inspired by encountering a clownfish at the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla. Looking through the glass window of the aquarium glass opens up a new world of graceful motion of swimming fish and jellyfish.
What You Don’t Really Know
Original Song
Bob Cat and Kat McCarthy
When you open a window to other perspectives, you gain insights on different viewpoints. Through the lens of others' eyes, there's a lot that can be learned.
Seasons Through My Window
Original Song
Paulette Fry (music) and Nancy Rehkugler (lyrics) with Judie Murphy (singer)
The main character in this story is homebound and views the seasons of the year through her window. Both her senses and the seasons of her life are experienced through the window. The music mirrors the melancholy, the memories, and the triumph.
Ballad of Alcides Moreno [New York City Window Cleaner]
Original Song
Frank Kelly (lyrics)
Jamie Cunningham (music & performance)
This song is based on a true story.
Music Entries - 2019
Musical Compositions
balAnce by Paulette Fry
Original Composition
balAnce “balances” at measure 56 (using the notes B,A,C,E). From there on, all musical elements—notes, rhythms, chords, key centers, dynamics, tempo shadings, and articulation--repeat the first half of the piece BACKWARDS: a perfect balAnce.
Graph of key centers simulates inverted A of balAnce.
Sections with crossed hands reflect physical balance at the keyboard.
Finding Balance by John E. Lutz
Original Composition
We start with a percussion image seeking the major chord that provides balance to the composition. This yields to a sorrowful woodwind soliloquy depicting the elusiveness of balance. Finally brass discover the major theme and the entire ensemble finds the major balancing chord with a concluding finale.
A Passing Shower (Kalimba)) by Scott Turner
Original Composition
The water cycle embodies the Earth’s fundamental balance: flow of water down rivers into the oceans, into the atmosphere, then as rain. A Passing Shower (Kalimba) combines the liquid sound of the kalimba, with dulcimer and chimes, to depict a passing shower on a summer’s day.
Songs with Words
Here’s to What’s Left by Patty Francis
Original Song
This song approaches “balance” as “reserve,” something left we can access when needed. When we’re young, we think everything lasts forever; with age we realize that things can run out. Entities like time are ultimately beyond our control. Essential commodities, like love and joy, are not, if we’re careful.
Veggies and Beer by Bobcat
Original Song
Life’s about balance, that's for sure. So, the more veggies I eat.... I can beer MORE!
Music Entries - 2018
Musical Compositions
The Goldfinch Fugue by Lynn Arthur Koch
Original Composition
“The Goldfinch Fugue” is written for wind quartet. When some small birds take off, they flap a bit, then sink slightly with wings folded, then flap again to gain altitude. This phenomenon inspired the shape of the theme in this piece. ‘Fugue’ is derived from the Latin ‘fuga,’ meaning flight.
Flight of the Sopwith Camel by John E. Lutz
Original Composition
The Sopwith Camel was an iconic British single-engine bi-plane fighter from World War I. Listen to the starting of its engine, the sound as it taxis and begins to take off, its high flying, a few simple stunts, a final fly-over, then its disappearance into the blue.
Foogy: Avia Africana by Scott Turner
Original Composition
This piece is a musical homage to the birds of southern Africa. From strutting guitars to a soaring trombone chorus, Foogy is a musical celebration of birds taking to the air. The music stands alone as a celebration of flight, but it is best heard as an accompaniment to a slide show of various African birds.
Flight 896 by Donna Atwood
Original Song
This song is meant to comically depict the ordeal that air travel has become. From overcrowding of baggage storage to on board safety speeches, airline flights are just a hassle. Enjoy your in-flight entertainment.
One-Way Ticket by Patty Francis
Original Song
“Fight or Flight” refers to our bodies’ reaction when we experience attack. Since November 2016, many in this country have grown fearful of the political climate and what it means for our nation’s future. While I have written several “fight” songs, this is all about the other option.
Choreography
Armor of Feathers by Teasa Luke
Choreography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D35dD7IqrQ&feature=youtu.be
Armor or Feathers is a circle dance to the song: Heart of Courage by Two Steps from Hell that captures the flight of the heart of those going to war and those who wait for them to return home...a crucial connection that transcends space and time.
First Flight by Donna Atwood
Choreography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm0vTMB_ZCA&feature=youtu.be
My fascination with the bravery of a small bird to take its first flight, leaping off the edge of its nest, inspired this choreography
Taking Two: Movement Towards Flight by Beth MacRae
Choreography
(for judges only after email approval)
When we’re up against something not easily done – like the quixotic flight of a mere quilt – we may try different ways of reaching our goal: gentle coaxing and cajolery; disruptive reprimand and reprisal. At long last, we may find movement towards flight – in the complete conjoining of self and subject.
Music Entries - 2017
Musical Compositions
FACE-ing the Music (My Kingdom for a G) by Paulette Fry
FACE-ing uses only 4 notes, F, A, C, and E with no chromatics. There is a bit of irony in the fact that the part for clarinet, a transposing instrument, uses G, B, D, and F#, this providing the G of the sub-title “through the back door.”
FACEs for Woodwind Choir by John E. Lutz
A popular pneumonic to remember spaces on a treble scale is to name them by the letters of their notes: F, A, C, E, or face. This composition for woodwind choir is named FACEs because every note throughout both melody and harmony is exclusive to these four notes.
For Kosaki by Emmanuel J. Sikora
When I write a piece for someone, it is because their face, their aura, directly inspired me. This piece is dedicated to Kosaki Onodera, a fictional character from the Japanese anime Nisekoi.
Songs with Words
Face to Face by Patricia Francis
Most simply, the song represents the theme as a noun, the lyrics evoking the act of two people looking at each other “en face.” What it’s really about is the theme as a verb, about the struggle to confront and accept the great comfort –and extreme terror- of intimacy.
Can You Face It? by Donna Atwood
Putting words and melody together is always a tricky thing. These chords went together and the words harken back to a time of just falling in love, that questioning phase when everything is unsure, hoping it will be real. Facing the possibilities ahead, worried that they won’t reciprocate that love.
Peace Be With You by Lynn Arthur Koch
"Peace Be With You", a choral work by xxxxxx. The refrain embodies an expression of peace in eleven languages. Think of each language as a reflection of a face - Israeli, Palestinian, African, Korean, European - different faces of different cultures and races, all human, all capable of living in harmony.
Music Entries - 2016
Circle of Fifths for Brass Choir, Flutes and Percussion by John E. Lutz
The Circle of Fifths is a sequence of musical pitches of the chromatic scale, starting with C Major and moving clockwise by 12 key changes in ascending fifths (i.e. C-G-D, and so on around the circle, returning to C Major).
In this composition, the melody and its variations start turning slowly, then quicken to the midpoint before slowing, with each melodic phrase played in the succeeding key on the Circle.
Between melodic phrases, an interlude recycles a progression of the first notes of each key around the Circle, starting in the succeeding key. It ends with a round in the beginning key, C Major.
Circling by David Beale
Do you realize, oh, oh, oh?
Do you realize that everyone you know
Someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Lyrics quoted from Flaming Lips - Do You Realize??
Notes: All instruments in the score are at concert pitch. “Circling” is intended to be performed in a circle around the audience in the order the instruments appear in the score.
Meditation on “Amazing Grace” by Lynn Arthur Koch
This piece involves several different “circles.” The pedal line (ground bass) repeats without variation from beginning to end. Above it, the tune is deconstructed, in one voice, then two, until the intact tune is presented as a round harmonized in the right hand with the melody alone in the left.
Prelude on “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Lynn Arthur Koch
This piece is intended as a meditation on the communion experience, which happens cyclically (weekly or monthly) throughout the church year. The tune (Hamburg) is treated three times. First it is inverted, then presented retrograde, and finally in its original form, resulting in three different “circles” (iterations) of the tune
Circles & Rounds by Paulette Fry and Nancy Rehkugler
Entire work is a rondo in ABACA form where the A theme circles up and down on the staff: B is a round, text enumerating circular items; C is the textual climax with piano dropping out and then cycling back in. The key change form C to G is the first step on the “Circle of Fifths.”
Music Entries - 2015
Greensleeves: Variation on a Modal Melody by David Beale
Trombone Quartet
The traditional English folk tune “Greensleeves” dates to the sixteenth century. Apparently Lady Greensleeves was rather promiscuous. At that time, the word “green” had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase “a green gown,” a reference to the grass stains on a woman’s dress after frolicking in the grass…
Sounds Green to Me by John E. Lutz
Music can champion causes, like the seam of green eco-conscious songs included in this medley. I’ve translated G-R-E-E-N inot musical notes for the introduction and the ending; between is a greensong playlist:
“Whose Garden Was This?” (Tom Paxton)
“What Have They Done to the Rain?” (Malvina Reynolds)
“Pollution” (Tom Lehrer)
“Green, Green” (Christy Minstrels)
“He’s Got the Whole World” (Spiritual)
Their sequencing communicates despair evolving into hope.
Green Fields by Emmanuel J. Sikora
Green Fields was conceived at the piano, and as the music came to me I saw an image of green fields far away; this is how the piece got its name. It is a variation on a theme from Bellini’s opera “Il Puritani.”
Beautiful Home by Paulette Fry and Nancy Rehkugler
Performed by Elizabeth Martin (soprano) and Emily Martin Walters (alto and flute)
We chose the environmentalist’s perception of “green” as it implies a concern for our earth and an awareness of both its fragility and its source of nurture for human life.
Music Entries - 2014
That’s What It Is by Paulette Fry & Nancy Rehkugler
Performed by Paulette Fry (piano) & Elizabeth Martin (voice)
The text defines the quiet / serene joys of life as well as the more triumphant ones. The music (piano accompaniment) paints the text.
March for Joy by John E. Lutz
This march is a spritely tune written for a concert band. Its spirited music wants the listener to smile and dance and laugh. While it frolics between woodwinds, brass, and percussion, it aims to be happy, joyful, cheerful,…and fun.
Music Entries - 2013
Reflections by John E. Lutz
Reflections—sound thrown back; echoing.
In this piece, reflection examples include:
• Repeating phrases (in the beginning melodic theme and its following semi-tone variation)
• Echoing birds
• Bouncing between brass and woodwinds in playful interlude
• Returning mirror image (woodwind organ played backwards by brass)
• Repeated mischievous phrase by xylophone
• Echoing closing exclamation
What’s Real by Greg McQuade
A reflection of what is seen and felt.