I will give any excuse to make people listen to Eve Beglarian. I have friends who have Landscaping for Privacy (that’s for another playlist) tattooed on their brain because of my evangelism of this woman’s music. This week I went with an S-tier Beglarian work: Robin Redbreast. I’ve performed this piece and it is… very difficult. Although the piccolo part is more challenging than the vocal line I was singing.

I hope you enjoy this playlist, Tell the Birds. I selected works about birds, flight, or hover around the two. The only work I knew going in to this was Robin Redbreast, so I had a ton of exposure to works completely unknown to me before making this playlist. Enjoy!

To have these playlists delivered to your inbox every week, sign up for my newsletter.

1. Robin Redbreast by Eve Beglarian. Album: Tell the Birds. Eve says this about the piece, “Robin Redbreast was commissioned by Mary Sharp Cronson for an evening celebrating the poet Stanley Kunitz. I chose his poem of the same name, which I think is a small, brutal masterpiece.” I highly recommend perusing the score while you listen.
2. String Quartet No 2: III. Of Birds and Insects by Vivian Fung performed by the Jasper String Quartet. Album: Insects & Machines. “The Quartet first performed one of her works in 2019, and we were immediately captivated by the visceral energy and impeccable craft of her writing. Vivian’s String Quartets Nos. 1–4 span 18 years of her career and reflect a remarkable journey of absorbing, integrating, and synthesizing a unique spectrum of influences into her compositional voice. Unwavering in all of the works is a fierce heart, instrumental fearlessness, and an amazing instinct for texture. We are incredibly grateful to have recorded these works with Vivian in the studio and for the growth we experienced in the process.” – Jasper String Quartet
3. Wings by Joan Tower performed by the Da Capo Chamber Players. Album: Music of Joan Tower. I know this is a longer piece to put on the first half of the playlist, but this encapsulated what I was hoping to find so well. “Tower stated that while the work certainly supports plenty of bird imagery, it was not written based on an image, but rather came out of [Laura] Flax’s unique qualities as a clarinettist. Another influence was Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, which bears some resemblance in the long phrases, dynamic extremes, and unmetered notation. Wings requires great endurance and breath control, particularly to navigate the nuances of the many long altissimo notes.”
4. Ornithopter by Nick DiBerardino performed by The Brass Project. Album: Cityscaping. I am stoked to be able to include a brass sextet on a more “delicate” sounding playlist. “An “ornithopter,” from the Greek “ornithos” (bird) and “pteron” (wing), is a flying machine designed to fly by flapping its wings. …My piece takes the image of a struggling ornithopter as a guiding metaphor: the brass players work together here, flapping furiously, working against the odds to achieve lift in spite of their—pardon my candor—tremendous collective weight.” -Nick DiBerardino
5. Hirondelle by Hannah Selin performed by Alexandra Jones and Nicki Adams. Single: Hirondelle (cello version). “With layered strings, vocals, percussion and synths, Hirondelle reimagines the vast intercontinental migration of the graceful barn swallow and simultaneously summons the expansiveness of a solo bike expedition across the United States. I composed this piece in 2015, and in 2020 created a new version for solo cello and playback.” -Hannah Selin
6. Birds and Insects, Book I: IV. Titmouse by Arlene Sierra performed by Vassily Primakov. Album: Music of Arlene Sierra Vol 1. From the Illuminate Blog, “Another important inspiration for Sierra is her fascination with the behaviours and mechanisms of biological life forms from tiny insects to humanity itself. It is the processes of nature, rather than a simple reflection or meditation that form the basis for Sierra’s compositional approach.”
7. An Exaltation of Larks by Jennifer Higdon performed by The Lark Quartet. Album: Jennifer Higdon: An Exaltation of Larks. “The first time someone told me that a collection of Larks is called an ‘Exaltation’, I immediately thought, ‘What a sound an exaltation of larks must make!’–How to capture the beauty of the idea of exalting and singing? A string quartet seemed perfect!” -Jennifer Higdon
8. Sparrows in Supermarkets by Paula Matthusen performed by Terri Hron. Album: Flocking Patterns. This is hands down my second favorite piece on this playlist. The recorder line reminds me of the Robin Redbreast main vocal line. This piece morphs into something so unexpected, and I am still on the edge of my seat when listening. “sparrows in supermarkets seeks not to convey literal birdsong, but rather to examine snippets of melodic repetition as they inhabit different, and at times surprising, spaces. The piece originally grew out of a series of improvisations between Terri Hron and myself, eventually evolving into a fully scored work with fixed media and live-electronics.” -Paula Matthusen
9. Wild Bird by R. Murray Schafer. Album: Ariadne’s Legacy. I wasn’t able to find anything about this piece specifically, but if you aren’t familiar with Schafer’s work, here is some insight, “As the self-styled ‘father of acoustic ecology,’ Schafer was concerned about the damaging effects of technological sounds on humans, especially those living in the ‘sonic sewers’ of urban environments. His booklets The Book of Noise and The Music of the Environmentare reasoned but impassioned pleas for anti-noise legislation and improvement of the urban soundscape through the elimination or reduction of potentially destructive sounds. Of the various publications Schafer released as a result of his work with the World Soundscape Project, the most important is The Tuning of the World (1977), in which he summarizes his research, philosophies, and theories on the soundscape. The concept of soundscape, which is central to Schafer’s thinking as a whole, influenced his work as a composer as well. For instance, the background rhythmic structure for String Quartet No. 2 (‘Waves’) is based on the intervals at which ocean waves crest; and the graphic notation at the beginning of No Longer Than Ten (10) Minuteswas influenced by charts made of Vancouver traffic noise.” –The Canadian Encyclopedia
10. FLiGHT (Version for String Quartet): IV. Perspective by Roger Reynolds performed by the JACK Quartet. Album: FLiGHT not forgotten. “Completing its journey at the Park Avenue Armory, FLiGHT culminates in a performance event lasting about 80 minutes and synthesizing a wide span of performance components: an acoustical musical composition (a four-movement string quartet), other sound material, the interactive involvement of four actors voicing texts drawn from several millennia and several different cultures on the subject of flight, and a web of visual imagery that is projected onto 30 2 x 2 foot boxes that are reoriented by the quartet members as the performance develops. The quartet members also employ Foley sound devices during the media sections. The process of creation has lasted over three years. FLiGHT is an undertaking that in a sense updates the Gesamtkunstwerk for the hyper-technical 21st century.” -Thomas May
11. Strange Birds Passing by John Luther Adams performed by the New England Contemporary Ensemble. Musically, this was the perfect end to this set. It is only by accident that these are the program notes, “Composers have for centuries attempted to convey bird song in music. John L. Adams has approached the task differently than Beethoven with his gilded cage birds or Messiaen with his wild ones. One senses Adams is trying to capture the soul of being a bird — what it is to soar and circle, to move as the breeze dictates. In Strange Birds Passing, his repeated figures, using the same pitches in floating arpeggios working in easy counterpoint, are as a flock of birds whose wings flap in the same way but each in their own space.” -Program Note from New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble concert program, 10 November 2022