Quiet Music is a three-movement work for solo cello.  Its title refers to the work’s singular sonority, dominated by the use of natural harmonics and the exclusive use of the practice mute (a large mute radically affecting the instruments voice).  Quiet Music was commissioned by cellists Craig Hultgren, David Russell, Jonathan Golove, and Madeleine Shapiro with assistance from the Birmingham Art Music Alliance.  This is the premiere of the work.
Andrew Rindfleisch
Performed March 30, 2008
Craig Hultgren

Bare ruin’d choirs… was written for Hultgren.  Following a slow introduction in harmonics that displays the principal interval series of this one-movement work, a broad and accelerating connecting device leads to a fast, agitated passage of bowed tremelos.  The piece continues to unfold in alternating fast and slow tempos before returning to a quiet variant of the opening announcement.  Bare ruin’d choirs… was cited for merit in the 2003 Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial.

Longevity II was specially composed for Hultgren as a birthday present. It is a transliteration of the human gene sequence known as APOC3 that has been linked to longevity.

Impossible Animals (1989) is scored for violin and computer-synthesized voices. It is based on an earlier work commissioned by the Hamilton College Chorus in 1986. There are also versions of the piece for four voices (1989), oboe (1990), trombone (2003), and five winds (1994), all with computer-synthesized voices.

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