Flutist Megan Shanley Alger has commissioned Luna, for amplified alto flute and electronics. Inspired by the amazing women who contributed crucially to the Apollo 11 moon landing, the title of this piece  refers to Luna, goodess of the moon in ancient Roman mythology.Female members of the Apollo Space Program included Bobbie Johnson, Judith Love Cohen, Ann Dickson, and Ann Maybury. Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. From mathematician/engineer Ethel Heinecke Bauer to mathematician and ‘human computer’ Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan, these are an amazing group of women who rose far above the constraints that society placed on them as women. We are in their debt!

This project is part of Meghan Shanley Alger’s Making Waves commissioning project, itself an effort to continue breaking the bounds that have kept so many women composers and performers from reaching their potential. Having come of age as a composer during the 1970’s-80’s, and having served as President of American Women Composers, I have experienced these bounds myself, and am especially pleased by Ms. Alger’s project. She has commissioned a diverse groupAshi Day, Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, Shara Lunon, Niloufar Nourbakhsh  and Annika K. Socolofsky in addition to myself.

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Fasting Heart wins in the 2024 National Flute Newly Published Music Competition solo flute category, having just been published by American Composers Editions. Recorded by Patricia Spencer on her Narcissus and Kairos album, Fasting Heart was inspired by the Taoist discipline “hsin chai.” As Professor Kaltenmark explains in his Lao Tzu and Taoism, this is a technique of purification in which one transcends the act of listening with the heart (or mind) to listen with the breath (or soul). For more information visit its composition page. And you can hear it on multiple streaming services, including here.

Judith will participate with performances of her music during  New Music on the Point, June 7 & 8, with Juraj Kojs as Interim-Artistic Director, and a terrific group of performers and composers.  Her new version of Ice Becomes Water (amp. string quartet and electronics) will premiere on June 7, while Forest Music, inspired by trees of the region, for guided improv and any number of performers will be premiered on 7/8. There will be rich interactions with the environment – both as inspiration and performance venues, as well as musical experiments incorporating the natural environment.

Instrumentation: Viola & Marimba
Duration: 9:00
Commission:  Piedmont Duo/University of Virginia
Premiere: 3/26/2024, Old Cabell Auditorium, University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Performers: Ayn Balija (viola), I-Jen Fang (marimba)

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Program Note:
The Piedmont Duo’s innovative combination of viola and marimba inspired the title Mariola, which delightfully combines their names and also refers to a hardy shrub that grows in the Southwest of the US and can handle extremely dry conditions. It overcomes them to blossom in the summer with delicate white flowers. This provided a rich metaphor for the compositional process, from pushing ideas into shape to their gradual flourishing. The piece begins with the intensity of seeds taking root and growing. The harmonic anchor gradually changes, ultimately rising a major second as the plants reach the light, culminating in a stratsopheric registral and timbral close. I am delighted that my colleagues and dear friends Ayn Balija and I-Jen Fang, the founders of the innovative Piedmont Duo, not only spearheaded this project, but also enthusiastically collaborated in exploring the marvelous range of their instruments.―JS

Juventas New Music Ensemble:
Anne Howarth, horn; Thomas Barth, cello; Julia Scott Carey, piano

Instrumentation: Cello, Horn & Piano
Duration: 10:35
Commission: Anne Howarth, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, with additional support from the Meir Rimon Commissinoing Assistance Program of the IHS.
Premiere: 01/27/2024, Multicultural Arts Center; Cambridge, MA
Performers: Members of the Juventas New Music Ensemble

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Program Note:

The title Canta la Sal is drawn from Pablo Neruda’s profound poem Oda A La Sal. What drew me to that source was a conversation with hornist Anne Howarth in the initial stages of the commissioning of this trio for horn, cello and piano. For Anne, salt touches on a fundamental aspect of life – we cannot exist without it. And it touches on deep emotion – tears, laughter. It likewise resonated for me, and as I continued thinking about  and delving into the topic, I came across Neruda’s powerful ode. It  encompasses the basic nature of salt – on the flats, in deep mines; the sounds of salt on the flats in the Chilean desert; its use to flavor our food and enable life, as well as the fantastic leap from its place in our mouths to the enormity of the ocean. There are wonderful images, of the singing salt, of the mountain of buried light, the transparent cathedral, the crystal of the sea. These images and metaphors infuse the harmonic, rhythmic  and timbral trajectories of the trio. I am grateful to the multiple partners who commissioned this piece: Anne Howarth, who spearheaded it;  the Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and the Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Program of the International Horn Society.  ―JS

Judith was guest composer at the UNCSA. Her visit started with a colloquium for the composition seminar focused on her compositional design process and transformative timbral approach.  Next, outstanding violinist Kevin Lawrence performed Rising on the Wings of Dawn as the capstone of his touring of this program both in NC and Utah. His recital, with the excellent pianist Dmitri Shteinberg,  featured a wonderfully diverse group of pieces by Copland, Price and Walton as well as Shatin in the beautiful recital hall of the School of the Arts

The terrific Piedmont Duo, with violist Ayn Balija and percussionist I-Jen Fang, has commissioned Mariola. The title combines the names of the two instruments, and is the name of a hardy southwestern shrub that survives and thrives in very dry conditions. Just so, music thrives in surprising nooks and crannies!  Mariola  is part of a project promoting and recording the music of women composers, in particular those associated with the UVA Music Department, and will be premiered on March 22, 2024  in Old Cabell Auditorium at 8:00 p.m.

Musicologist Denise Von Glahn’s Chapter Relational Capacities, Musical Ecologies: Judith Shatin’s Ice Becomes Water, has been published in Sounds, Ecologies, Musics,  ed. by Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Titon  and published by Oxford University Press. Her analysis is rich and captures a great deal about the  music and its context.

Cellist Sophie-Justine Herr’s album :innen (Within) drops on 3/8/24 with a concert on March 8, International Women’s Day, in Network Seilerei in Frankfurt am Main. You can find her wonderful trailer on PASCHEN records here. Her wide-ranging repertoire includes music by Elisenda Fábregas.  (Catalonia).  Teresa Grebchenko (Poland), Young Pagh-Paan (South Korea), Kaija Saariaho (Finland), as well as Shatin’s (USA) For the Birds.  She will tour this program, with multiple concerts this season. This is the third recording of For the Birds, the first by US Cellist Madeleine Shapiro, with the second by Mexican cellist Iracema de Andrade. As birds have become increasingly decimated by climate change, building strikes and other habitat loss, it is ever more important to listen to their voices and move to protect them.