Marilyn Bliss

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Marilyn Bliss

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Iowa-born Marilyn Bliss has written many widely performed orchestral, chamber, and solo works. Educated at Coe College and the University of Pennsylvania, her teachers include such distinguished composers as George Crumb, George Rochberg, Jacob Druckman, Jerry Owen, and Harvey Sollberger. Her many awards include a Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy/Institute of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Young Composers Award, Newly Published Flute Music awards from the National Flute Association, fellowships from Tanglewood, the Composers Conference, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and commissions from the Azure Ensemble, Haydn-Mozart Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Powell Quartet, the flutists James Zellers, James Pellerite, and Nina Assimakopoulos, and the National Flute Association. About her orchestral piece Huatzu Hill, the Boston Globe said “…a series of rich landscapes – the colors sharp, the feelings powerfully concentrated, the language eloquent, the expression precise.” Records International Catalogue calls her piano work Fantasies “a virtuosic, highly varied work, fantastic and wide-ranging.” Her Rima for piccolo and piano has been used as a standard contest piece for the National Flute Association’s piccolo competition. Several of Ms. Bliss’s recent scores have featured the Native American flute, both as a solo instrument and in combination with other instruments. Ms. Bliss is currently President of New York Women Composers. Her music has been performed throughout the world; she has been a guest of the SS. Cyril and Methodius Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria, and of the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico. Her works have also recently been performed in Russia, Armenia, and Italy. Ms. Bliss is published by the American Composers Alliance, Mostly Marimba Productions, and Zalo/JP-Publications. Many videos of her music are available on her YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/MarilynBliss1

Beneath the Azure Sky

Year: 2004

Duration (in minutes): 11'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, mixed instrument quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, flute, soprano, violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/beneath-azure-sky

Description: Composed in 2004, Beneath the Azure Sky is a setting in three movements of poetry by Afghan women. For many reasons, this poetry is deliberately anonymous and not written down: most Afghan women are illiterate, having been denied education by the society they live in. The poetry is often also startlingly intimate, revealing inner thoughts that would be deadly to express publicly; the poems are often addressed to lovers who would be killed if they were found out. The form of the poetry is called the landay, a very brief poetic form consisting of two verse lines of nine and thirteen syllables. I have chosen several different landays to knit together a narrative: the first movement is entitled Love, the second Separation, and the third Exile. The poetry became available to us through the courageous efforts of Afghan national poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, who surreptitiously collected them in oral interviews in Afghan refugee camps. Founder of the Afghan Information Center after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was assassinated in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988. These poems were translated from Pashtun into French by Majrouh, and from French into English by the distinguished translator Marjolijn de Jager. Although my musical language is not folklike, I have attempted to create in this piece a clarity of expression to allow the words and emotions to communicate freely from performers to audience.

Murali

Year: 2003

Duration (in minutes): 3'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/murali

Description: When asked by Nina Assimakopoulos to write a short piece for flute inspired by literature, my attention turned to the many depictions of Krishna playing the flute that one can see by strolling through the streets of my multicultural neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, New York. Murali is the name of Krishna’s flute. In Hindu cosmology and tales, such as those set forth in Robert Calasso’s book Ka, Krishna plays his flute at the first full moon of autumn. It is a very alluring, seductive melody, and it calls to the female cowherds (the gopis), who are all in love with Krishna. At the sound of Krishna’s flute, they come out of their dwellings and dance, surrounding Krishna. The dancing becomes more and more fevered, when suddenly Krishna disappears before their eyes. Soon they once more hear the murali, from a location just beyond the horizon. Is he calling them, or taunting them? The gopis can never decide, but Krishna is always in their hearts.

Spirit Dance

Year: 1999

Duration (in minutes): 3'45"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: flute, other

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/spirit-dance

Description: Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. Inspired by Native American shaman ceremonies, this piece for Native American flute and maracas features bending tones and a steadily building accelerando to an ecstatic ending. The flute part may also be played on concert flute, or adapted for shakuhachi.

Blue Dawn

Year: 1998

Duration (in minutes): 4'40"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/blue-dawn

Description: Blue Dawn is a mellow, cheerful piece celebrating the fresh air and big sky of the High Plains region of the United States. Originally written for Native American flute, and thus based on the natural pentatonic scale of that instrument, the visual image for the listener can be of awaking before dawn and watching the sun rise from one’s dwelling in the wilderness, gradually illuminating the landscape and bringing out its natural colors and beauty. The challenging cello part can be heard as an ever-flowing stream, pausing only for the flute’s cadenza at the close of the piece.
Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. May also be played by concert flute.

Wind Songs

Year: 1995

Duration (in minutes): 8'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Instruments: flute, other, soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/wind-songs

Description: Comprised of two pieces: the solo work I. Phantom Breeze shows the struggle for dominance between the conventional note pattern of the Native flute's scale and the interlopers (neighboring tones), and II. It Was the Wind, a setting of an evocative Navajo text for soprano and flute.

It Was the Wind

Year: 1995

Duration (in minutes): 4'55"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble, solo voice(s) with solo instruments

Instruments: flute, other, soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/wind-songs

Description: Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. Part of the set of "Wind Songs", along with "Phantom Breeze", "It Was the Wind" is a setting of a Navajo text for Native American flute and soprano (it may also be played by concert flute).

Phantom Breeze

Year: 1993

Duration (in minutes): 3'34"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: flute, other

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/wind-songs

Description: Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. May also be played by concert flute. Part of the set of "Wind Songs", along with "It Was the Wind", this solo movement shows the struggle for dominance between conventional note pattern of the Native flute's scale and the interlopers (neighboring tones), shaping a drama of tonal beauty.

Autumnal

Year: 1991

Duration (in minutes): 14'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, clarinet, flute, piano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/autumnal

Description: Autumnal, for flute, clarinet, cello, and piano, was written in 1991 on commission from the flutist James Zellers. It begins quietly, introspectively, with a symmetrical pitch structure that, if left alone, would endlessly repeat itself; a note of dissonance is at last introduced to open up the piece and allow it to go forward. In its consequent adventures the piece begins to dance, at first gracefully, but eventually ecstatically, instruments competing and racing against each other until the clarinet cries out for a halt, not able to continue. The opening material returns, now imbued with meaning not previously evident, and, in a coda, the piece evaporates. "Autumnal" was premiered by the Friends and Enemies of New Music and has been performed at the Prague Festival.

Aurora Borealis

Year: 1990

Duration (in minutes): 11'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: percussion ensemble, percussion quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: percussion

Publisher: Mostly Marimba

Publisher website: https://www.mostlymarimba.com/

Purchase score URL: https://www.mostlymarimba.com/product/aurora-borealis-marilyn-bliss/

Description: 4 players, 2 vibraphone, 1 glockenspiel, 3 suspended cymbals, wood block, temple blocks, marimba, crotale, tam-tam, glass chimes, ceramic chimes, sleigh bells, maracas. "Aurora Borealis" draws its inspiration from the arctic phenomena also known as the Northern Lights. The author Barry Lopez (in "Arctic Dreams") has described the aurora as "pale gossamer curtains of light that seem to undulate across arctic skies...The most remarkable effect they seem to have...is to draw a viewer emotionally up and out of himself, because they throw the sky into a third dimension..." My composition is meant to reflect this view of the aurora -- its shimmering, almost tangible quality, its envelopment of the senses, its meditative, spiritual presence. Premiered by the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble and published by Mostly Marimba Publications.

Bestiary

Year: 1989

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo string instrument

Instruments: violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/bestiary

Description: Bestiary, for violin solo, is a suite of four movements, each depicting a mythological beast. The first movement, "Chimæra," like its namesake, is composed of several broadly diverse elements that improbably are brought together to make a whole. The second movement, "Minotaur (the Maze)," depicts the Cretan labyrinth that housed the Minotaur through an intricate stream of notes that doubles back on itself, encounters walls, finds the maze's center, and retraces its path out to safety. The "Sphinx" offers its question three times: first, to a very nervous traveler who answers incorrectly and is devoured; next, to a traveler who answers with bravado -- but still incorrectly -- and is also eaten; and, finally, to Oedipus, who answers with somber assurance, destroying the Sphinx. The final movement, "Pegasus," is a galloping romp through the sky by the beautiful winged white horse. Bestiary was written for and is dedicated to the violinist Mia Wu. "Theatrically descriptive... offering lovely two-part writing..." Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rima

Year: 1989

Duration (in minutes): 11'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo instrument with piano, solo woodwind with piano

Instruments: piano, piccolo

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/rima

Description: Rima for piccolo and piano is based on a character from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions. Set in the Amazon, Green Mansions features the character of a girl-creature of the forest who communicates in a bird-like language. In Rima the piccolo portrays the character during the course of a day, from the first stirrings of dawn, through the animation of midday, to the bittersweet quiet of dusk. "Rima" was commissioned and premiered by the Piccolo Committee of the National Flute Association. It is used as a standard competition piece by the NFA. "...a significant contribution to the literature..." Flutist Quarterly. Recorded by Susan Glaser on Koch International Classics 3-7396-2-H1 and by Nicola Mazzanti on his self-produced CD "A Night with the Piccolo" available from CDBaby.com and from the artist.

Three Short Movements

Year: 1989

Duration (in minutes): 5'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo brass instrument, solo instrument other than piano

Instruments: trombone

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/three-short-movements

Description: A suite of three concise bravura movements for solo trombone. The first opens with a fanfare, then immediately hides in the shadows, before playfully popping out again. The movement then shifts to perpetual motion, surprising with unexpected sforzandos and slides, before fading back to the shadows. The second movement is a soulful aria, to be played lyrically and with heartfelt longing. The third movement is a brilliant contrast in dynamics, registers, and rhythms, steadily accumulating into a whirlwind of virtuosic energy. Three Short Movements was premiered by Jerry Owen; it was originally in composed in 1976 and revised in 1989.

Flocks

Year: 1988

Duration (in minutes): 9'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: flute quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, woodwind ensemble, woodwind quartet

Instruments: alto flute, flute, piccolo

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/flocks

Description: Flocks, for flute quartet, was inspired by the annual migration of flocks of birds from their summer home in the North to their winter home in the South. The piece is loosely programmatic, beginning with the first restless urges of some, then even the most reluctant birds, to leave their northern home, through their joyful flight south -- often flying in parallel or similar motion --, to the sighting of their southern home, and finally the quiet of sleep after the long journey. This work was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, the Powell Quartet.

Veils

Year: 1986

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: orchestra and chamber orchestra

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/veils

Description: Veils was inspired by a group of paintings by the great American abstract painter Morris Louis. For these paintings Louis devised a technique of staining the canvas, allowing the colors both to mingle and to keep separate their identities. The results are paintings of delicate, veil-like translucence, which, combined with their large scale, entice the observer to enter. In my orchestra piece, I have translated some of these techniques and images into music. Winds are in pairs and usually appear together, purifying their color; melodic lines in the strings are seamlessly passed from section to section; quasi-canonic passages create increasingly dense, but still translucent, "veils" of sound. Throughout the piece, the principal oboe is the protagonist. It sometimes seems to stand aside, observing, reflecting, only to be swept back into the flow of the piece. Thus the oboe-observer sees the piece from within, at last fulfilling the desire of the observer in the gallery.
"Veils" was commissioned and premiered by the Haydn-Mozart Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn, NY. "...a flair for orchestration... evoked large washes of sound from the players...lovely sonorities...." Brooklyn Phoenix. It can be heard on Navona Records: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6369/

Lament

Year: 1984

Duration (in minutes): 3'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: alto flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/lament

Description: The genesis of "Lament," written in 1984, was a recollection of an early Martha Graham dance entitled Lamentation, in which the dancer sits on the floor and stretches her elastic jersey costume about her body with her feet and hands. I was impressed not only by the sad, isolated, wrenching mood of the dance, but also by its focus and its exploration of a single idea. Concurrent with this memory was a desire to write a new piece for solo flute, and a realization of the great beauty of sound that exists in the alto flute. Lament has been choreographed by Ruth Meyer, former principal, American Ballet Theater.

Three Farewells

Year: 1984

Duration (in minutes): 11'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble

Instruments: flute, harp, soprano, viola

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/three-farewells

Description: Three Farewells, written in 1984, explores the subject of parting as portrayed in three poems of Greek Antiquity. The first poem, written in Greek epigram form, mourns the death of Queen Cleopatra-Selene. Daughter of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Cleopatra-Selene was also named after the moon-goddess Selene. It was said that, in tribute at her death, the moon went into an eclipse. The second poem, assembled from fragments, tells of the flight of Helen from Greece and the tragic aftermath of her decision. The third poem, again in epigram form, is a bitter and moving lament on the death of Orpheus. The final lines of this poem shift the emphasis to a broader mourning, that of the utter helplessness of humanity to escape the ultimate destiny of death.

Celestial Greetings

Year: 1983

Duration (in minutes): 8'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo voice(s) with piano

Instruments: piano, soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/celestial-greetings

Description: Celestial Greetings, written in 1983, is a setting of three traditional Scottish-Gaelic folk prayers to the celestial bodies. Rather than creating three separate songs, I have treated the poems as variations-upon-a-theme, the passing of a day.

Aria

Year: 1982

Duration (in minutes): 2'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo brass instrument

Instruments: tuba

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Outside URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RwCR3SnQj2w7m45LJ9AoV

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/aria-tuba

Description: Aria for tuba solo is a brief, lyrical exploration of the tuba’s full range. It gives the tubist a chance to highlight the tonal beauty of the instrument, too often neglected in the literature, and can additionally be used as an etude for dynamic and breath control.

Evocations

Year: 1981

Duration (in minutes): 10’30”

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo brass instrument, solo instrument other than piano

Instruments: tuba

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Outside URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RwCR3SnQj2w7m45LJ9AoV

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/evocations

Description: Evocations for solo tuba was written in 1982 and is dedicated to Albert Dlugasch, who premiered the work. The four movements explore the broad range of sound, timbre, register, and emotion obtainable on this too-often misunderstood and neglected instrument. The first movement, Præludium, opens with brassy, fanfare-like material, contrasting with a second theme of mellow lyricism. It is followed by the black humor of Burlesque, and the sweet melancholy of Arioso. The final movement, Largo-Finale, begins slowly in the tuba's lowest register, then adds a second line in contrary motion as the performer hums into the instrument. The mood is interrupted by a triplet figure introducing the finale, an intricate, whirlwind movement of virtuosic difficulty.

Chameleon

Year: 1981

Duration (in minutes): 9'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, mixed instrument trio, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, flute, piano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/chameleon

Description: Chameleon, for flute, 'cello, and piano, was written in 1980-81 and takes as its inspiration the remarkable adaptability of the chameleon to its surroundings. Its analogue in this piece is a motive, A-E-Bb-Gb, that is continuously present in various guises throughout the many changing moods of the trio.

Trio

Year: 1979

Duration (in minutes): 20'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, mixed instrument trio, piano trio (vln, vc, pno), small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, piano, violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/trio

Description: The Trio for violin, 'cello, and piano, commissioned and performed in 1979 by the Philadelphia Art Alliance, uses the framework of classic three-movement form (sonata-allegro, theme-and-variations, rondo) as its point of departure. These forms interact with the musical language, which sometimes upholds but often subverts them. Themes may intertwine, disintegrate, or reappear in a different movement, constantly challenging their subordination to form, while simultaneously deriving their meaning from it.

Huatzu Hill

Year: 1979

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: orchestra and chamber orchestra, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble

Instruments: soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/huatzu-hill

Description: Huatzu Hill for soprano and chamber orchestra is a setting of four poems by Wang Wei, an 8th-century Chinese poet, as translated into English by G.W. Robinson. Three of the four songs depict landscapes near Wang's country retreat in the Wang River valley. The second song is a bittersweet farewell to a beloved friend. Huatzu Hill is scored for chamber orchestra and soprano soloist. It was premiered at the Composers Conference in Vermont and has been performed by the New England Philharmonic and the Berkshire Symphony. "A series of rich landscapes - the colors sharp, the feeling powerfully concentrated, the expression concise..." Boston Globe.

Shadowflowers

Year: 1978

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: larger chamber ensembles - more than 4 players, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble

Instruments: alto flute, cello, English horn, flute, harp, horn, oboe, percussion, piccolo, soprano, tenor voice, violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/shadowflowers

Description: Shadowflowers is an unstaged psychodrama for soprano, tenor, and chamber ensemble. The text, assembled from the poetry of Stefan George, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Guillaume Apollinaire, concerns two beautiful, yet repulsive, artificial worlds. George's poem, from "Algabal," used in its entirety, presents to the reader an underground garden, beautiful but completely artificial, black, and dead. In Mallarmé's "Hérodiade," excerpted here, the reader encounters a beautiful virgin, living in a world of white and jewels, allowing nothing to touch her. The poems are sung together, commenting on each other while carrying on their own dramatic senses. Another factor in choosing the text was the constant recurrence of the words "shadow" and "flower" in all excerpts, which contributes to the black/white, dark/bright imagery. The music is in two unbroken sections, following the shape of the text. Shadowflowers was performed at the Tanglewood Festival.

Fantasies

Year: 1977

Duration (in minutes): 10'30"

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: piano

Instruments: piano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/fantasies

Description: Fantasies for solo piano, written in 1977, is in three contrasting movements. The dramatic first movement is metrically free, with virtuosic cadenzas. The second is a night piece, and beneath its gentle mood lie hints of strangeness. The third movement pits three very different materials against each other—rapid runs, thickly textured chords, and a short, quirky motif, which compete for territory. "Fantasies" was performed at the Moscow Autumn Music Festival and recorded by Elena Ivanina on North-South Recordings 1017. "...A virtuosic, highly varied work, fantastic and wide-ranging...:"Records International".

Encounter

Year: 1975

Duration (in minutes): 3'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/encounter

Description: A sly and slithering creature encounters an adversary while on its daily rounds. It scurries, looks for cover, then camouflages itself. The adversary helps itself to the creature’s motive, violently transforming it in the flute’s high register. The adversary hunts for the creature, unsuccessfully looking for it high and low, eventually exhausting itself with huge registral leaps. Cautiously, the creature emerges from hiding, then stretches itself in the low and middle registers. Reassured, it relaxes, safe for another day.

Echoes &Boundaries

Year: 2001

Music for solo Native American flute. Includes "Phantom Breeze" by Marilyn Bliss.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, SantaFe Galloway, Ray Friendly, Kevin Purrone, Randall Snyder, James J. PPellerite, John White, Kazuo Tokito, and Mary Jeanne van Appledorn.

Label: JP Publications

Buy URL: https://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Boundaries-James-J-Pellerite/dp/B001O54P8I

Buy URL 2: https://open.spotify.com/album/6GlAswXVmwQIe0OJzMkwnV

Brass Tacks 2

Year: 2023

Music for brass instruments

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Lawrence K. Moss, Edward “Ted” Messerschmidt, Henry Wolking, David F. Wilborn, Janice Macaulay, and Paul Paccione

Label: Navona Records

Label's Website: https://www.navonarecords.com

Product ID: NV6556

Buy URL: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6556/

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/brass-tacks-2/1703102103

Points of Entry: The Laurels Project

Year: 2003

Points of Entry: The Laurels Project, V. I - Nina Assimakopoulos, flutist.

Includes Spirit Man by Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy, Prelude by Mary Ann Joyce-Walter, Comment by Beth Anderson, Murali by Marilyn Bliss, and works by Ran, Payne, Lomon, Owens, Diemer, Hyson, Glickman, Cox, Tower, Shafer, and Folio. Available from the artist or through Spotify streaming service.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy, Beth Anderson, Mary Ann Joyce

Label: Private

Buy URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/7mhUEfYlbrLGyIlIBoSoXz

Buy URL 2: https://www.ninaassimakopoulos.info/site/Recordings.html

New York Tapestires

Year: 2019

It Was the Wind, Marilyn Bliss
Arranged for two flutes

Also music by Rain Worthington, Pamela Sklar, Alyssa Reit and Victoria Bond. Available for streaming at links below.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Rain Worthington, Pamela Sklar, Alyssa Reit, Victoria Bond

Label's Website: https://www.2flutes.net/news/

Buy URL: https://music.apple.com/us/album/new-york-tapestries/1448581506?app=itunes&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Buy URL 2: https://open.spotify.com/album/06c34DHZekfbE2sI5z3K17

Embrace the Wind

Year: 2014

Blue Dawn and Spirit Dance, Marilyn Bliss, composer

Also music by Justin Rubin; Ray Friendly; David DeBoor Canfield; Randall Snyder; John Heins; Michael Mauldin

James J. Pellerite, Native flute; Lindsey McLennan, soprano; Amanda Russo, mezzo-soprano; Karen Evans Moratz, flute; Christine Buras, soprano; Andrew Rader, countertenor; Mason Copeland, tenor; Julian Morris, bass-baritone; Dominick DiOrio, conductor; Rachel Patrick, violin; Andrew Francois, viola; Cole Tutino, cello

Composers: Marilyn Bliss

Label: Albany Records

Label's Website: http://www.albanyrecords.com

Product ID: Troy 1465

Buy URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/2MQp3cmJfbaI1prWmMT52m

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/embrace-the-wind/932427001

Mystic Voices Soaring

Year: 2015

Wind Songs, Marilyn Bliss, composer

Also music by Don Freund, John Heins, Justin Rubin, William Hill, James Aikman

James Pellerite, Native flute; Arwen Myers, soprano; Laura Beckel Thoreson, mezzo-soprano, Logan Strawn, viola; Cole Tutino, cello; Karen Evans Moratz, flute; Amanda Russo, mezzo-soprano; George Shirley, narrator

Composers: Marilyn Bliss

Label: Albany Records

Label's Website: http://www.albanyrecords.com

Product ID: Troy 1607

Buy URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gMMv28ZOKr0u3sXtwth6c

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/mystic-voices-soaring/1063143501

Woven in Time

Contemporary Orchestral Works
Including Veils for Chamber Orchestra by Marilyn Bliss

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Richard E. Brown, Scott Brickman, Jay Anthony Gach, Joseph T. Spagniola

Label: Navona Records, LLC

Label's Website: https://www.navonarecords.com

Product ID: NV6369

Buy URL: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6369/

Buy URL 2: https://www.amazon.com/Woven-Time-Various-artists/dp/B09J5GVX51

Airs to Charm a Lizard

Katherine Kleitz, flutist. Features Lament for alto flute by Marilyn Bliss, Shenblu by Victoria Bond, Reflections by Katherine Hoover, and works by Escher, Couperin, Rorem, Marais, Honegger, Kirchoff, Blank, Boismoitier, Debussy, and Friendly.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Victoria Bond, Katherine Hoover, others.

Product ID: NECD-Airs

Buy URL: https://www.amazon.com/Airs-Charm-Lizard-Kirchoff/dp/B0007MVHWG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470446721&sr=8-1&keywords=airs+to+charm+a+lizard

American Music from the Moscow Autumn Festival

Year: 1997

Elena Ivanina, pianist. Includes Fantasies by Marilyn Bliss, Three for Five by Binnette Lipper, as well as works by Boyadjian, Feigin, and Biscardi.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Binnette Lipper, others.

Label: North/South Recordings

Label's Website: https://www.northsouthmusic.org/

Product ID: N/S R 1017

Buy URL: https://www.northsouthmusic.org/American-Music-from-the-Moscow-Autumn-Festival

Buy URL 2: https://open.spotify.com/album/4DokP8bN5FWS9kStAKkwwP

Nicola Mazzanti: A Night with the Piccolo

Year: 2006

Rima for piccolo and piano by Marilyn Bliss, performed by Nicola Mazzanti, piccolo, and Giovanni Verona, piano. Also includes music by Daugherty, Benshoof, Gènin, Boncompagni, Cavicchi, and Lovreglio. Available through streaming services and directly from the performer at www.piccoloflute.it

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, others.

Label: Private

Product ID: Mazz-01

Buy URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/7j8hEWJWDyQ3mt081z6hFn

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-night-with-the-piccolo/200886972

Bittersweet Music

Marilyn Bliss: Rima for piccolo and piano
Other Composers: Ken Benshoof, George Tsontakis, Thea Musgrave, David Loeb, Bun-ching Lam, John La Montaine. Performers: Susan Glaser, piccolo; Robert Markham, piano. Available from the composers and from Amazon.Com, and Tower Records.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, others.

Product ID: Koch International Classics 3-7396-2-H1

Buy URL: https://www.amazon.com/Bittersweet-Music-Susan-Glaser/dp/B000001SK0

Chameleon

Year: 1981

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Chameleon, for flute, 'cello, and piano, was written in 1980-81 and takes as its inspiration the remarkable adaptability of the chameleon to its surroundings. Its analogue in this piece is a motive, A-E-Bb-Gb, that is continuously present in various guises throughout the many changing moods of the trio. This performance by the Marsyas Trio was live-streamed on Facebook.

Video URL: https://fb.watch/gquggXfdHz/?mibextid=nxlvZT

Rima

Year: 1989

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Rima for piccolo and piano is based on a character from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions. Set in the Amazon, Green Mansions features the character of a girl-creature of the forest who communicates in a bird-like language. In Rima the piccolo portrays the character during the course of a day, from the first stirrings of dawn, through the animation of midday, to the bittersweet quiet of dusk. "Rima" was commissioned and premiered by the Piccolo Committee of the National Flute Association. It is used as a standard competition piece by the NFA.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/l4h4TA41C7k

Spirit Dance

Year: 1999

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Inspired by Native American shaman ceremonies, this piece for Native American flute and maracas features bending tones and a steadily building accelerando to an ecstatic ending. The flute part may also be played on concert flute, or adapted for shakuhachi.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/twtKVK4GY6o

Aurora Borealis

Year: 1990

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: "Aurora Borealis" draws its inspiration from the arctic phenomena also known as the Northern Lights. The author Barry Lopez (in "Arctic Dreams") has described the aurora as "pale gossamer curtains of light that seem to undulate across arctic skies...The most remarkable effect they seem to have...is to draw a viewer emotionally up and out of himself, because they throw the sky into a third dimension..." My composition is meant to reflect this view of the aurora -- its shimmering, almost tangible quality, its envelopment of the senses, its meditative, spiritual presence.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhlANFHpNYE

Flocks

Year: 1988

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Flocks, for flute quartet, was inspired by the annual migration of flocks of birds from their summer home in the North to their winter home in the South. The piece is loosely programmatic, beginning with the first restless urges of some, then even the most reluctant birds, to leave their northern home, through their joyful flight south -- often flying in parallel or similar motion --, to the sighting of their southern home, and finally the quiet of sleep after the long journey.

Video URL: https://www.2flutes.net/news/

Fantasies

Year: 1977

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Fantasies for solo piano, written in 1977, is in three contrasting movements. The dramatic first movement is metrically free, with virtuosic cadenzas. The second is a night piece, and beneath its gentle mood lie hints of strangeness. The third movement pits three very different materials against each other—rapid runs, thickly textured chords, and a short, quirky motif, which compete for territory.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/McWGmZTlpX4

Veils

Year: 1986

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Veils was inspired by a group of paintings from the 1950s by the great American abstract painter Morris Louis, who was one of the leaders of the Color Field movement. For these paintings Louis devised a technique of staining the canvas, allowing the colors both to mingle and to keep separate their identities, achieving his goal of unifying figure and ground. The results are paintings of delicate, veil-like translucence, which, combined with their large scale, entice the observer to enter. In my orchestra piece, I have translated some of these techniques and images into music. Winds are in pairs and usually appear together, purifying their color; melodic lines in the strings are seamlessly passed from section to section; quasi-canonic passages create increasingly dense, but still translucent, "veils" of sound. Throughout the piece, the principal oboe is the protagonist. It sometimes seems to stand aside, observing, reflecting, only to be swept back into the flow of the piece, and at the climax, seemingly in danger of subsuming its individuality into the ensemble as a whole. But in this way, the oboe-observer sees the piece from within, at last fulfilling the desire of the observer in the gallery.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/Id4iTPGzErQ

Three Short Movements

Year: 1989

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Video URL: https://youtu.be/gykFYWPqq74

Celestial Greetings

Year: 1983

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Celestial Greetings, written in 1983, is a setting of three traditional Scottish-Gaelic folk prayers to the celestial bodies. Rather than creating three separate songs, I have treated the poems as variations-upon-a-theme, the passing of a day.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/ZHC6ex4Fy1E

Bestiary

Year: 1989

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Bestiary, for violin solo, is a suite of four movements, each depicting a mythological beast. The first movement, "Chimæra," like its namesake, is composed of several broadly diverse elements that improbably are brought together to make a whole. The second movement, "Minotaur (the Maze)," depicts the Cretan labyrinth that housed the Minotaur through an intricate stream of notes that doubles back on itself, encounters walls, finds the maze's center, and retraces its path out to safety. The "Sphinx" offers its question three times: first, to a very nervous traveler who answers incorrectly and is devoured; next, to a traveler who answers with bravado -- but still incorrectly -- and is also eaten; and, finally, to Oedipus, who answers with somber assurance, destroying the Sphinx. The final movement, "Pegasus," is a galloping romp through the sky by the beautiful winged white horse.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy_lKdBSMnA

Blue Dawn

Year: 1998

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Blue Dawn is a mellow, cheerful piece celebrating the fresh air and big sky of the High Plains region of the United States. Originally written for Native American flute, and thus based on the natural pentatonic scale of that instrument, the visual image for the listener can be of awaking before dawn and watching the sun rise from one’s dwelling in the wilderness, gradually illuminating the landscape and bringing out its natural colors and beauty. The challenging cello part can be heard as an ever-flowing stream, pausing only for the flute’s cadenza at the close of the piece.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/ETi5yK0t0Vo

Murali

Year: 2003

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: When asked by Nina Assimakopoulos to write a short piece for flute inspired by literature, my attention turned to the many depictions of Krishna playing the flute that one can see by strolling through the streets of my multicultural neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, New York. Murali is the name of Krishna’s flute. In Hindu cosmology and tales, such as those set forth in Robert Calasso’s book Ka, Krishna plays his flute at the first full moon of autumn. It is a very alluring, seductive melody, and it calls to the female cowherds (the gopis), who are all in love with Krishna. At the sound of Krishna’s flute, they come out of their dwellings and dance, surrounding Krishna. The dancing becomes more and more fevered, when suddenly Krishna disappears before their eyes. Soon they once more hear the murali, from a location just beyond the horizon. Is he calling them, or taunting them? The gopis can never decide, but Krishna is always in their hearts.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/AQoktA-3hQE

Beneath the Azure Sky

Year: 2004

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: For soprano, flute, violin, and cello, a setting in three movements of oral poetry by Afghan women whose names remain anonymous. The poems were originally couplets called "landays" which I knitted together to form a narrative. The first movement is entitled Love, the second Separation, and the third Exile.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/24qTLfoUA1E

Huatzu Hill

Year: 1979

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Huatzu Hill for soprano and chamber orchestra is a setting of four poems by Wang Wei, an 8th-century Chinese poet, as translated into English by G.W. Robinson. Three of the four songs depict landscapes near Wang's country retreat in the Wang River valley. The second song is a bittersweet farewell to a beloved friend. This performance is by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Gayane Geghamyan, soprano, Ruben Asatrian, conductor.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxmUUu-LFU

Wind Songs - for Native American flute and voice

Year: 1995

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Comprised of two pieces: the solo work I. Phantom Breeze shows the struggle for dominance between the conventional note pattern of the Native flute's scale and the interlopers (neighboring tones), and II. It Was the Wind, a setting of an evocative Navajo text for soprano and flute. Performance by James Pellerite, Native American flute and Tricia Melzer-Swaydrak, soprano. Photos by Albert Dlugasch.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDXOFcKJQTo

New recording released!

Navona Records has just released its compilation album for brass called Brass Tacks 2, featuring two pieces for solo tuba by Marilyn Bliss, Aria and Evocations. The latter is a four-movement piece and is a significant addition to the literature for this too often overlooked instrument. More information regarding the album with complete details on all the compositions, program notes, and links for purchases and streaming are available here: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6556/ and a roundtable interview with the composers can be read here: https://www.navonarecords.com/news/artist-roundtable-brass-tacks-2/


Featured Image:

Interview with me published

The Inside Story: Marilyn Bliss and WOVEN IN TIME


Parma Recordings did a short interview with me in connection with the recording of my piece for chamber orchestra, Veils, that is now available on its CD, Woven in Time. The full interview, with catalog and streaming links, can be found through the link below.



 


Outside Link for entire post: https://www.parmarecordings.com/inside-story-marilyn-bliss-and-woven-in-time/

BIOGRAPHY
Iowa-born Marilyn Bliss has written many widely performed orchestral, chamber, and solo works. Educated at Coe College and the University of Pennsylvania, her teachers include such distinguished composers as George Crumb, George Rochberg, Jacob Druckman, Jerry Owen, and Harvey Sollberger. Her many awards include a Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy/Institute of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Young Composers Award, Newly Published Flute Music awards from the National Flute Association, fellowships from Tanglewood, the Composers Conference, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and commissions from the Azure Ensemble, Haydn-Mozart Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Powell Quartet, the flutists James Zellers, James Pellerite, and Nina Assimakopoulos, and the National Flute Association. About her orchestral piece Huatzu Hill, the Boston Globe said “…a series of rich landscapes – the colors sharp, the feelings powerfully concentrated, the language eloquent, the expression precise.” Records International Catalogue calls her piano work Fantasies “a virtuosic, highly varied work, fantastic and wide-ranging.” Her Rima for piccolo and piano has been used as a standard contest piece for the National Flute Association’s piccolo competition. Several of Ms. Bliss’s recent scores have featured the Native American flute, both as a solo instrument and in combination with other instruments. Ms. Bliss is currently President of New York Women Composers. Her music has been performed throughout the world; she has been a guest of the SS. Cyril and Methodius Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria, and of the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico. Her works have also recently been performed in Russia, Armenia, and Italy. Ms. Bliss is published by the American Composers Alliance, Mostly Marimba Productions, and Zalo/JP-Publications. Many videos of her music are available on her YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/MarilynBliss1
COMPOSITIONS

Beneath the Azure Sky

Year: 2004

Duration (in minutes): 11'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, mixed instrument quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, flute, soprano, violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/beneath-azure-sky

Description: Composed in 2004, Beneath the Azure Sky is a setting in three movements of poetry by Afghan women. For many reasons, this poetry is deliberately anonymous and not written down: most Afghan women are illiterate, having been denied education by the society they live in. The poetry is often also startlingly intimate, revealing inner thoughts that would be deadly to express publicly; the poems are often addressed to lovers who would be killed if they were found out. The form of the poetry is called the landay, a very brief poetic form consisting of two verse lines of nine and thirteen syllables. I have chosen several different landays to knit together a narrative: the first movement is entitled Love, the second Separation, and the third Exile. The poetry became available to us through the courageous efforts of Afghan national poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, who surreptitiously collected them in oral interviews in Afghan refugee camps. Founder of the Afghan Information Center after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was assassinated in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988. These poems were translated from Pashtun into French by Majrouh, and from French into English by the distinguished translator Marjolijn de Jager. Although my musical language is not folklike, I have attempted to create in this piece a clarity of expression to allow the words and emotions to communicate freely from performers to audience.

Murali

Year: 2003

Duration (in minutes): 3'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/murali

Description: When asked by Nina Assimakopoulos to write a short piece for flute inspired by literature, my attention turned to the many depictions of Krishna playing the flute that one can see by strolling through the streets of my multicultural neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, New York. Murali is the name of Krishna’s flute. In Hindu cosmology and tales, such as those set forth in Robert Calasso’s book Ka, Krishna plays his flute at the first full moon of autumn. It is a very alluring, seductive melody, and it calls to the female cowherds (the gopis), who are all in love with Krishna. At the sound of Krishna’s flute, they come out of their dwellings and dance, surrounding Krishna. The dancing becomes more and more fevered, when suddenly Krishna disappears before their eyes. Soon they once more hear the murali, from a location just beyond the horizon. Is he calling them, or taunting them? The gopis can never decide, but Krishna is always in their hearts.

Spirit Dance

Year: 1999

Duration (in minutes): 3'45"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: flute, other

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/spirit-dance

Description: Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. Inspired by Native American shaman ceremonies, this piece for Native American flute and maracas features bending tones and a steadily building accelerando to an ecstatic ending. The flute part may also be played on concert flute, or adapted for shakuhachi.

Blue Dawn

Year: 1998

Duration (in minutes): 4'40"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/blue-dawn

Description: Blue Dawn is a mellow, cheerful piece celebrating the fresh air and big sky of the High Plains region of the United States. Originally written for Native American flute, and thus based on the natural pentatonic scale of that instrument, the visual image for the listener can be of awaking before dawn and watching the sun rise from one’s dwelling in the wilderness, gradually illuminating the landscape and bringing out its natural colors and beauty. The challenging cello part can be heard as an ever-flowing stream, pausing only for the flute’s cadenza at the close of the piece.
Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. May also be played by concert flute.

Wind Songs

Year: 1995

Duration (in minutes): 8'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Instruments: flute, other, soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/wind-songs

Description: Comprised of two pieces: the solo work I. Phantom Breeze shows the struggle for dominance between the conventional note pattern of the Native flute's scale and the interlopers (neighboring tones), and II. It Was the Wind, a setting of an evocative Navajo text for soprano and flute.

It Was the Wind

Year: 1995

Duration (in minutes): 4'55"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble, solo voice(s) with solo instruments

Instruments: flute, other, soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/wind-songs

Description: Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. Part of the set of "Wind Songs", along with "Phantom Breeze", "It Was the Wind" is a setting of a Navajo text for Native American flute and soprano (it may also be played by concert flute).

Phantom Breeze

Year: 1993

Duration (in minutes): 3'34"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: flute, other

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/wind-songs

Description: Commissioned by James Pellerite for his on-going creation of literature for the Native American flute. May also be played by concert flute. Part of the set of "Wind Songs", along with "It Was the Wind", this solo movement shows the struggle for dominance between conventional note pattern of the Native flute's scale and the interlopers (neighboring tones), shaping a drama of tonal beauty.

Autumnal

Year: 1991

Duration (in minutes): 14'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, clarinet, flute, piano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/autumnal

Description: Autumnal, for flute, clarinet, cello, and piano, was written in 1991 on commission from the flutist James Zellers. It begins quietly, introspectively, with a symmetrical pitch structure that, if left alone, would endlessly repeat itself; a note of dissonance is at last introduced to open up the piece and allow it to go forward. In its consequent adventures the piece begins to dance, at first gracefully, but eventually ecstatically, instruments competing and racing against each other until the clarinet cries out for a halt, not able to continue. The opening material returns, now imbued with meaning not previously evident, and, in a coda, the piece evaporates. "Autumnal" was premiered by the Friends and Enemies of New Music and has been performed at the Prague Festival.

Aurora Borealis

Year: 1990

Duration (in minutes): 11'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: percussion ensemble, percussion quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: percussion

Publisher: Mostly Marimba

Publisher website: https://www.mostlymarimba.com/

Purchase score URL: https://www.mostlymarimba.com/product/aurora-borealis-marilyn-bliss/

Description: 4 players, 2 vibraphone, 1 glockenspiel, 3 suspended cymbals, wood block, temple blocks, marimba, crotale, tam-tam, glass chimes, ceramic chimes, sleigh bells, maracas. "Aurora Borealis" draws its inspiration from the arctic phenomena also known as the Northern Lights. The author Barry Lopez (in "Arctic Dreams") has described the aurora as "pale gossamer curtains of light that seem to undulate across arctic skies...The most remarkable effect they seem to have...is to draw a viewer emotionally up and out of himself, because they throw the sky into a third dimension..." My composition is meant to reflect this view of the aurora -- its shimmering, almost tangible quality, its envelopment of the senses, its meditative, spiritual presence. Premiered by the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble and published by Mostly Marimba Publications.

Bestiary

Year: 1989

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo string instrument

Instruments: violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/bestiary

Description: Bestiary, for violin solo, is a suite of four movements, each depicting a mythological beast. The first movement, "Chimæra," like its namesake, is composed of several broadly diverse elements that improbably are brought together to make a whole. The second movement, "Minotaur (the Maze)," depicts the Cretan labyrinth that housed the Minotaur through an intricate stream of notes that doubles back on itself, encounters walls, finds the maze's center, and retraces its path out to safety. The "Sphinx" offers its question three times: first, to a very nervous traveler who answers incorrectly and is devoured; next, to a traveler who answers with bravado -- but still incorrectly -- and is also eaten; and, finally, to Oedipus, who answers with somber assurance, destroying the Sphinx. The final movement, "Pegasus," is a galloping romp through the sky by the beautiful winged white horse. Bestiary was written for and is dedicated to the violinist Mia Wu. "Theatrically descriptive... offering lovely two-part writing..." Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rima

Year: 1989

Duration (in minutes): 11'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo instrument with piano, solo woodwind with piano

Instruments: piano, piccolo

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/rima

Description: Rima for piccolo and piano is based on a character from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions. Set in the Amazon, Green Mansions features the character of a girl-creature of the forest who communicates in a bird-like language. In Rima the piccolo portrays the character during the course of a day, from the first stirrings of dawn, through the animation of midday, to the bittersweet quiet of dusk. "Rima" was commissioned and premiered by the Piccolo Committee of the National Flute Association. It is used as a standard competition piece by the NFA. "...a significant contribution to the literature..." Flutist Quarterly. Recorded by Susan Glaser on Koch International Classics 3-7396-2-H1 and by Nicola Mazzanti on his self-produced CD "A Night with the Piccolo" available from CDBaby.com and from the artist.

Three Short Movements

Year: 1989

Duration (in minutes): 5'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo brass instrument, solo instrument other than piano

Instruments: trombone

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/three-short-movements

Description: A suite of three concise bravura movements for solo trombone. The first opens with a fanfare, then immediately hides in the shadows, before playfully popping out again. The movement then shifts to perpetual motion, surprising with unexpected sforzandos and slides, before fading back to the shadows. The second movement is a soulful aria, to be played lyrically and with heartfelt longing. The third movement is a brilliant contrast in dynamics, registers, and rhythms, steadily accumulating into a whirlwind of virtuosic energy. Three Short Movements was premiered by Jerry Owen; it was originally in composed in 1976 and revised in 1989.

Flocks

Year: 1988

Duration (in minutes): 9'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: flute quartet, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, woodwind ensemble, woodwind quartet

Instruments: alto flute, flute, piccolo

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/flocks

Description: Flocks, for flute quartet, was inspired by the annual migration of flocks of birds from their summer home in the North to their winter home in the South. The piece is loosely programmatic, beginning with the first restless urges of some, then even the most reluctant birds, to leave their northern home, through their joyful flight south -- often flying in parallel or similar motion --, to the sighting of their southern home, and finally the quiet of sleep after the long journey. This work was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, the Powell Quartet.

Veils

Year: 1986

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: orchestra and chamber orchestra

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/veils

Description: Veils was inspired by a group of paintings by the great American abstract painter Morris Louis. For these paintings Louis devised a technique of staining the canvas, allowing the colors both to mingle and to keep separate their identities. The results are paintings of delicate, veil-like translucence, which, combined with their large scale, entice the observer to enter. In my orchestra piece, I have translated some of these techniques and images into music. Winds are in pairs and usually appear together, purifying their color; melodic lines in the strings are seamlessly passed from section to section; quasi-canonic passages create increasingly dense, but still translucent, "veils" of sound. Throughout the piece, the principal oboe is the protagonist. It sometimes seems to stand aside, observing, reflecting, only to be swept back into the flow of the piece. Thus the oboe-observer sees the piece from within, at last fulfilling the desire of the observer in the gallery.
"Veils" was commissioned and premiered by the Haydn-Mozart Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn, NY. "...a flair for orchestration... evoked large washes of sound from the players...lovely sonorities...." Brooklyn Phoenix. It can be heard on Navona Records: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6369/

Lament

Year: 1984

Duration (in minutes): 3'30"

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: alto flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/lament

Description: The genesis of "Lament," written in 1984, was a recollection of an early Martha Graham dance entitled Lamentation, in which the dancer sits on the floor and stretches her elastic jersey costume about her body with her feet and hands. I was impressed not only by the sad, isolated, wrenching mood of the dance, but also by its focus and its exploration of a single idea. Concurrent with this memory was a desire to write a new piece for solo flute, and a realization of the great beauty of sound that exists in the alto flute. Lament has been choreographed by Ruth Meyer, former principal, American Ballet Theater.

Three Farewells

Year: 1984

Duration (in minutes): 11'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble

Instruments: flute, harp, soprano, viola

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/three-farewells

Description: Three Farewells, written in 1984, explores the subject of parting as portrayed in three poems of Greek Antiquity. The first poem, written in Greek epigram form, mourns the death of Queen Cleopatra-Selene. Daughter of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Cleopatra-Selene was also named after the moon-goddess Selene. It was said that, in tribute at her death, the moon went into an eclipse. The second poem, assembled from fragments, tells of the flight of Helen from Greece and the tragic aftermath of her decision. The third poem, again in epigram form, is a bitter and moving lament on the death of Orpheus. The final lines of this poem shift the emphasis to a broader mourning, that of the utter helplessness of humanity to escape the ultimate destiny of death.

Celestial Greetings

Year: 1983

Duration (in minutes): 8'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo voice(s) with piano

Instruments: piano, soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/celestial-greetings

Description: Celestial Greetings, written in 1983, is a setting of three traditional Scottish-Gaelic folk prayers to the celestial bodies. Rather than creating three separate songs, I have treated the poems as variations-upon-a-theme, the passing of a day.

Aria

Year: 1982

Duration (in minutes): 2'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo brass instrument

Instruments: tuba

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Outside URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RwCR3SnQj2w7m45LJ9AoV

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/aria-tuba

Description: Aria for tuba solo is a brief, lyrical exploration of the tuba’s full range. It gives the tubist a chance to highlight the tonal beauty of the instrument, too often neglected in the literature, and can additionally be used as an etude for dynamic and breath control.

Evocations

Year: 1981

Duration (in minutes): 10’30”

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo brass instrument, solo instrument other than piano

Instruments: tuba

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Outside URL: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RwCR3SnQj2w7m45LJ9AoV

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/evocations

Description: Evocations for solo tuba was written in 1982 and is dedicated to Albert Dlugasch, who premiered the work. The four movements explore the broad range of sound, timbre, register, and emotion obtainable on this too-often misunderstood and neglected instrument. The first movement, Præludium, opens with brassy, fanfare-like material, contrasting with a second theme of mellow lyricism. It is followed by the black humor of Burlesque, and the sweet melancholy of Arioso. The final movement, Largo-Finale, begins slowly in the tuba's lowest register, then adds a second line in contrary motion as the performer hums into the instrument. The mood is interrupted by a triplet figure introducing the finale, an intricate, whirlwind movement of virtuosic difficulty.

Chameleon

Year: 1981

Duration (in minutes): 9'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, mixed instrument trio, small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, flute, piano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/chameleon

Description: Chameleon, for flute, 'cello, and piano, was written in 1980-81 and takes as its inspiration the remarkable adaptability of the chameleon to its surroundings. Its analogue in this piece is a motive, A-E-Bb-Gb, that is continuously present in various guises throughout the many changing moods of the trio.

Trio

Year: 1979

Duration (in minutes): 20'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: mixed instrument ensemble, mixed instrument trio, piano trio (vln, vc, pno), small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: cello, piano, violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/trio

Description: The Trio for violin, 'cello, and piano, commissioned and performed in 1979 by the Philadelphia Art Alliance, uses the framework of classic three-movement form (sonata-allegro, theme-and-variations, rondo) as its point of departure. These forms interact with the musical language, which sometimes upholds but often subverts them. Themes may intertwine, disintegrate, or reappear in a different movement, constantly challenging their subordination to form, while simultaneously deriving their meaning from it.

Huatzu Hill

Year: 1979

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: orchestra and chamber orchestra, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble

Instruments: soprano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/huatzu-hill

Description: Huatzu Hill for soprano and chamber orchestra is a setting of four poems by Wang Wei, an 8th-century Chinese poet, as translated into English by G.W. Robinson. Three of the four songs depict landscapes near Wang's country retreat in the Wang River valley. The second song is a bittersweet farewell to a beloved friend. Huatzu Hill is scored for chamber orchestra and soprano soloist. It was premiered at the Composers Conference in Vermont and has been performed by the New England Philharmonic and the Berkshire Symphony. "A series of rich landscapes - the colors sharp, the feeling powerfully concentrated, the expression concise..." Boston Globe.

Shadowflowers

Year: 1978

Duration (in minutes): 12'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: larger chamber ensembles - more than 4 players, solo voice(s) with chamber ensemble

Instruments: alto flute, cello, English horn, flute, harp, horn, oboe, percussion, piccolo, soprano, tenor voice, violin

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/shadowflowers

Description: Shadowflowers is an unstaged psychodrama for soprano, tenor, and chamber ensemble. The text, assembled from the poetry of Stefan George, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Guillaume Apollinaire, concerns two beautiful, yet repulsive, artificial worlds. George's poem, from "Algabal," used in its entirety, presents to the reader an underground garden, beautiful but completely artificial, black, and dead. In Mallarmé's "Hérodiade," excerpted here, the reader encounters a beautiful virgin, living in a world of white and jewels, allowing nothing to touch her. The poems are sung together, commenting on each other while carrying on their own dramatic senses. Another factor in choosing the text was the constant recurrence of the words "shadow" and "flower" in all excerpts, which contributes to the black/white, dark/bright imagery. The music is in two unbroken sections, following the shape of the text. Shadowflowers was performed at the Tanglewood Festival.

Fantasies

Year: 1977

Duration (in minutes): 10'30"

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: piano

Instruments: piano

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/fantasies

Description: Fantasies for solo piano, written in 1977, is in three contrasting movements. The dramatic first movement is metrically free, with virtuosic cadenzas. The second is a night piece, and beneath its gentle mood lie hints of strangeness. The third movement pits three very different materials against each other—rapid runs, thickly textured chords, and a short, quirky motif, which compete for territory. "Fantasies" was performed at the Moscow Autumn Music Festival and recorded by Elena Ivanina on North-South Recordings 1017. "...A virtuosic, highly varied work, fantastic and wide-ranging...:"Records International".

Encounter

Year: 1975

Duration (in minutes): 3'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: solo instrument other than piano, solo woodwind instrument

Instruments: flute

Publisher: American Composers Alliance

Publisher website: https://www.composers.com

Purchase score URL: https://composers.com/composers/marilyn-bliss/encounter

Description: A sly and slithering creature encounters an adversary while on its daily rounds. It scurries, looks for cover, then camouflages itself. The adversary helps itself to the creature’s motive, violently transforming it in the flute’s high register. The adversary hunts for the creature, unsuccessfully looking for it high and low, eventually exhausting itself with huge registral leaps. Cautiously, the creature emerges from hiding, then stretches itself in the low and middle registers. Reassured, it relaxes, safe for another day.

CDs

Echoes &Boundaries

Year: 2001

Music for solo Native American flute. Includes "Phantom Breeze" by Marilyn Bliss.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, SantaFe Galloway, Ray Friendly, Kevin Purrone, Randall Snyder, James J. PPellerite, John White, Kazuo Tokito, and Mary Jeanne van Appledorn.

Label: JP Publications

Buy URL 2: https://open.spotify.com/album/6GlAswXVmwQIe0OJzMkwnV

Brass Tacks 2

Year: 2023

Music for brass instruments

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Lawrence K. Moss, Edward “Ted” Messerschmidt, Henry Wolking, David F. Wilborn, Janice Macaulay, and Paul Paccione

Label: Navona Records

Label's Website: https://www.navonarecords.com

Product ID: NV6556

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/brass-tacks-2/1703102103

Points of Entry: The Laurels Project

Year: 2003

Points of Entry: The Laurels Project, V. I - Nina Assimakopoulos, flutist.

Includes Spirit Man by Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy, Prelude by Mary Ann Joyce-Walter, Comment by Beth Anderson, Murali by Marilyn Bliss, and works by Ran, Payne, Lomon, Owens, Diemer, Hyson, Glickman, Cox, Tower, Shafer, and Folio. Available from the artist or through Spotify streaming service.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy, Beth Anderson, Mary Ann Joyce

Label: Private

Buy URL 2: https://www.ninaassimakopoulos.info/site/Recordings.html

New York Tapestires

Year: 2019

It Was the Wind, Marilyn Bliss
Arranged for two flutes

Also music by Rain Worthington, Pamela Sklar, Alyssa Reit and Victoria Bond. Available for streaming at links below.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Rain Worthington, Pamela Sklar, Alyssa Reit, Victoria Bond

Label's Website: https://www.2flutes.net/news/

Buy URL 2: https://open.spotify.com/album/06c34DHZekfbE2sI5z3K17

Embrace the Wind

Year: 2014

Blue Dawn and Spirit Dance, Marilyn Bliss, composer

Also music by Justin Rubin; Ray Friendly; David DeBoor Canfield; Randall Snyder; John Heins; Michael Mauldin

James J. Pellerite, Native flute; Lindsey McLennan, soprano; Amanda Russo, mezzo-soprano; Karen Evans Moratz, flute; Christine Buras, soprano; Andrew Rader, countertenor; Mason Copeland, tenor; Julian Morris, bass-baritone; Dominick DiOrio, conductor; Rachel Patrick, violin; Andrew Francois, viola; Cole Tutino, cello

Composers: Marilyn Bliss

Label: Albany Records

Label's Website: http://www.albanyrecords.com

Product ID: Troy 1465

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/embrace-the-wind/932427001

Mystic Voices Soaring

Year: 2015

Wind Songs, Marilyn Bliss, composer

Also music by Don Freund, John Heins, Justin Rubin, William Hill, James Aikman

James Pellerite, Native flute; Arwen Myers, soprano; Laura Beckel Thoreson, mezzo-soprano, Logan Strawn, viola; Cole Tutino, cello; Karen Evans Moratz, flute; Amanda Russo, mezzo-soprano; George Shirley, narrator

Composers: Marilyn Bliss

Label: Albany Records

Label's Website: http://www.albanyrecords.com

Product ID: Troy 1607

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/mystic-voices-soaring/1063143501

Woven in Time

Contemporary Orchestral Works
Including Veils for Chamber Orchestra by Marilyn Bliss

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Richard E. Brown, Scott Brickman, Jay Anthony Gach, Joseph T. Spagniola

Label: Navona Records, LLC

Label's Website: https://www.navonarecords.com

Product ID: NV6369

Buy URL 2: https://www.amazon.com/Woven-Time-Various-artists/dp/B09J5GVX51

Airs to Charm a Lizard

Katherine Kleitz, flutist. Features Lament for alto flute by Marilyn Bliss, Shenblu by Victoria Bond, Reflections by Katherine Hoover, and works by Escher, Couperin, Rorem, Marais, Honegger, Kirchoff, Blank, Boismoitier, Debussy, and Friendly.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Victoria Bond, Katherine Hoover, others.

Product ID: NECD-Airs

American Music from the Moscow Autumn Festival

Year: 1997

Elena Ivanina, pianist. Includes Fantasies by Marilyn Bliss, Three for Five by Binnette Lipper, as well as works by Boyadjian, Feigin, and Biscardi.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, Binnette Lipper, others.

Label: North/South Recordings

Label's Website: https://www.northsouthmusic.org/

Product ID: N/S R 1017

Buy URL 2: https://open.spotify.com/album/4DokP8bN5FWS9kStAKkwwP

Nicola Mazzanti: A Night with the Piccolo

Year: 2006

Rima for piccolo and piano by Marilyn Bliss, performed by Nicola Mazzanti, piccolo, and Giovanni Verona, piano. Also includes music by Daugherty, Benshoof, Gènin, Boncompagni, Cavicchi, and Lovreglio. Available through streaming services and directly from the performer at www.piccoloflute.it

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, others.

Label: Private

Product ID: Mazz-01

Buy URL 2: https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-night-with-the-piccolo/200886972

Bittersweet Music

Marilyn Bliss: Rima for piccolo and piano
Other Composers: Ken Benshoof, George Tsontakis, Thea Musgrave, David Loeb, Bun-ching Lam, John La Montaine. Performers: Susan Glaser, piccolo; Robert Markham, piano. Available from the composers and from Amazon.Com, and Tower Records.

Composers: Marilyn Bliss, others.

Product ID: Koch International Classics 3-7396-2-H1

VIDEOS

Chameleon

Year: 1981

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Chameleon, for flute, 'cello, and piano, was written in 1980-81 and takes as its inspiration the remarkable adaptability of the chameleon to its surroundings. Its analogue in this piece is a motive, A-E-Bb-Gb, that is continuously present in various guises throughout the many changing moods of the trio. This performance by the Marsyas Trio was live-streamed on Facebook.

Video URL: https://fb.watch/gquggXfdHz/?mibextid=nxlvZT

Rima

Year: 1989

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Rima for piccolo and piano is based on a character from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions. Set in the Amazon, Green Mansions features the character of a girl-creature of the forest who communicates in a bird-like language. In Rima the piccolo portrays the character during the course of a day, from the first stirrings of dawn, through the animation of midday, to the bittersweet quiet of dusk. "Rima" was commissioned and premiered by the Piccolo Committee of the National Flute Association. It is used as a standard competition piece by the NFA.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/l4h4TA41C7k

Spirit Dance

Year: 1999

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Inspired by Native American shaman ceremonies, this piece for Native American flute and maracas features bending tones and a steadily building accelerando to an ecstatic ending. The flute part may also be played on concert flute, or adapted for shakuhachi.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/twtKVK4GY6o

Aurora Borealis

Year: 1990

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: "Aurora Borealis" draws its inspiration from the arctic phenomena also known as the Northern Lights. The author Barry Lopez (in "Arctic Dreams") has described the aurora as "pale gossamer curtains of light that seem to undulate across arctic skies...The most remarkable effect they seem to have...is to draw a viewer emotionally up and out of himself, because they throw the sky into a third dimension..." My composition is meant to reflect this view of the aurora -- its shimmering, almost tangible quality, its envelopment of the senses, its meditative, spiritual presence.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhlANFHpNYE

Flocks

Year: 1988

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Flocks, for flute quartet, was inspired by the annual migration of flocks of birds from their summer home in the North to their winter home in the South. The piece is loosely programmatic, beginning with the first restless urges of some, then even the most reluctant birds, to leave their northern home, through their joyful flight south -- often flying in parallel or similar motion --, to the sighting of their southern home, and finally the quiet of sleep after the long journey.

Video URL: https://www.2flutes.net/news/

Fantasies

Year: 1977

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Fantasies for solo piano, written in 1977, is in three contrasting movements. The dramatic first movement is metrically free, with virtuosic cadenzas. The second is a night piece, and beneath its gentle mood lie hints of strangeness. The third movement pits three very different materials against each other—rapid runs, thickly textured chords, and a short, quirky motif, which compete for territory.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/McWGmZTlpX4

Veils

Year: 1986

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Veils was inspired by a group of paintings from the 1950s by the great American abstract painter Morris Louis, who was one of the leaders of the Color Field movement. For these paintings Louis devised a technique of staining the canvas, allowing the colors both to mingle and to keep separate their identities, achieving his goal of unifying figure and ground. The results are paintings of delicate, veil-like translucence, which, combined with their large scale, entice the observer to enter. In my orchestra piece, I have translated some of these techniques and images into music. Winds are in pairs and usually appear together, purifying their color; melodic lines in the strings are seamlessly passed from section to section; quasi-canonic passages create increasingly dense, but still translucent, "veils" of sound. Throughout the piece, the principal oboe is the protagonist. It sometimes seems to stand aside, observing, reflecting, only to be swept back into the flow of the piece, and at the climax, seemingly in danger of subsuming its individuality into the ensemble as a whole. But in this way, the oboe-observer sees the piece from within, at last fulfilling the desire of the observer in the gallery.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/Id4iTPGzErQ

Three Short Movements

Year: 1989

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Video URL: https://youtu.be/gykFYWPqq74

Celestial Greetings

Year: 1983

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Celestial Greetings, written in 1983, is a setting of three traditional Scottish-Gaelic folk prayers to the celestial bodies. Rather than creating three separate songs, I have treated the poems as variations-upon-a-theme, the passing of a day.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/ZHC6ex4Fy1E

Bestiary

Year: 1989

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Bestiary, for violin solo, is a suite of four movements, each depicting a mythological beast. The first movement, "Chimæra," like its namesake, is composed of several broadly diverse elements that improbably are brought together to make a whole. The second movement, "Minotaur (the Maze)," depicts the Cretan labyrinth that housed the Minotaur through an intricate stream of notes that doubles back on itself, encounters walls, finds the maze's center, and retraces its path out to safety. The "Sphinx" offers its question three times: first, to a very nervous traveler who answers incorrectly and is devoured; next, to a traveler who answers with bravado -- but still incorrectly -- and is also eaten; and, finally, to Oedipus, who answers with somber assurance, destroying the Sphinx. The final movement, "Pegasus," is a galloping romp through the sky by the beautiful winged white horse.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy_lKdBSMnA

Blue Dawn

Year: 1998

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Blue Dawn is a mellow, cheerful piece celebrating the fresh air and big sky of the High Plains region of the United States. Originally written for Native American flute, and thus based on the natural pentatonic scale of that instrument, the visual image for the listener can be of awaking before dawn and watching the sun rise from one’s dwelling in the wilderness, gradually illuminating the landscape and bringing out its natural colors and beauty. The challenging cello part can be heard as an ever-flowing stream, pausing only for the flute’s cadenza at the close of the piece.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/ETi5yK0t0Vo

Murali

Year: 2003

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: When asked by Nina Assimakopoulos to write a short piece for flute inspired by literature, my attention turned to the many depictions of Krishna playing the flute that one can see by strolling through the streets of my multicultural neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, New York. Murali is the name of Krishna’s flute. In Hindu cosmology and tales, such as those set forth in Robert Calasso’s book Ka, Krishna plays his flute at the first full moon of autumn. It is a very alluring, seductive melody, and it calls to the female cowherds (the gopis), who are all in love with Krishna. At the sound of Krishna’s flute, they come out of their dwellings and dance, surrounding Krishna. The dancing becomes more and more fevered, when suddenly Krishna disappears before their eyes. Soon they once more hear the murali, from a location just beyond the horizon. Is he calling them, or taunting them? The gopis can never decide, but Krishna is always in their hearts.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/AQoktA-3hQE

Beneath the Azure Sky

Year: 2004

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: For soprano, flute, violin, and cello, a setting in three movements of oral poetry by Afghan women whose names remain anonymous. The poems were originally couplets called "landays" which I knitted together to form a narrative. The first movement is entitled Love, the second Separation, and the third Exile.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/24qTLfoUA1E

Huatzu Hill

Year: 1979

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Huatzu Hill for soprano and chamber orchestra is a setting of four poems by Wang Wei, an 8th-century Chinese poet, as translated into English by G.W. Robinson. Three of the four songs depict landscapes near Wang's country retreat in the Wang River valley. The second song is a bittersweet farewell to a beloved friend. This performance is by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Gayane Geghamyan, soprano, Ruben Asatrian, conductor.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxmUUu-LFU

Wind Songs - for Native American flute and voice

Year: 1995

Composer: Marilyn Bliss

Description: Comprised of two pieces: the solo work I. Phantom Breeze shows the struggle for dominance between the conventional note pattern of the Native flute's scale and the interlopers (neighboring tones), and II. It Was the Wind, a setting of an evocative Navajo text for soprano and flute. Performance by James Pellerite, Native American flute and Tricia Melzer-Swaydrak, soprano. Photos by Albert Dlugasch.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDXOFcKJQTo

NEWS POST

New recording released!

Post Content:

Navona Records has just released its compilation album for brass called Brass Tacks 2, featuring two pieces for solo tuba by Marilyn Bliss, Aria and Evocations. The latter is a four-movement piece and is a significant addition to the literature for this too often overlooked instrument. More information regarding the album with complete details on all the compositions, program notes, and links for purchases and streaming are available here: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6556/ and a roundtable interview with the composers can be read here: https://www.navonarecords.com/news/artist-roundtable-brass-tacks-2/


Featured Image:

Interview with me published

Post Content:

The Inside Story: Marilyn Bliss and WOVEN IN TIME


Parma Recordings did a short interview with me in connection with the recording of my piece for chamber orchestra, Veils, that is now available on its CD, Woven in Time. The full interview, with catalog and streaming links, can be found through the link below.



 


Outside Link for entire post: https://www.parmarecordings.com/inside-story-marilyn-bliss-and-woven-in-time/