Vera Ivanova
Vera Ivanova is an American composer
Vera Ivanova is a composer and on faculty at Chapman University (Associate Professor of Music, Music Theory/Composition Department) and the Colburn School. She graduated from Moscow Conservatory (BM and MM), Guildhall School in London (MM), and Eastman School (Ph.D.) with degrees in music composition. Her compositions have been performed worldwide and received many national and international awards. Her music has been published by Universal Edition (UE 31899) and released on CD by Ablaze Records (Millennial Masters series, Vol. 2), Quartz Music, Ltd., Navona Recordings (Nova and Allusions albums), Musiques & Recherches (Métamorphoses 2004), and Centaur Records (CRC 3056). More information is available at: www.veraivanova.com.
Aura
Aura
for clarinet solo (2011)
Greek in origin, the word "Aura" has multiple meanings, which stand for "air; atmosphere; sensation..." These meanings are interpreted in the piece through the use of extended techniques.
Program Notes:
The idea of this piece came to me in conversation with the clarinetist Virginia Costa Figueiredo, who asked me to write a piece for clarinet. Another clarinetist, Andrew Leonard, made a lot of suggestions on notation and extended techniques and gave the first performance of Aura.
The word aura has multiple meanings:
au·ra [awr-uh]:
1. a distinctive and pervasive quality or character; air; atmosphere: an aura of respectability; an aura of friendliness.
2. a subtly pervasive quality or atmosphere seen as emanating from a person, place, or thing.
3. Pathology. a sensation, as of lights or a current of warm or cold air, preceding an attack of migraine or epilepsy.
Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English < >-Quoted from Dictionary.com, LLC. Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved.
The piece can be performed with or without amplification. It makes use of extended techniques (multiphonics, slap tongue, flutter tongue, breathing air through the clarinet, key clicking).
Electrostatic Whale
Electrostatic Whale was composed in 2016 for the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble's clarinetist Oleg Tantsov. The piece is written for bass clarinet and is accompanied by a pre-recorded soundtrack; its main source comes from the sound sample of a whale song, manipulated and transformed through the use of various software to create an image of a creature, a digitized sea mammal, submerging into the deep ocean and emerging to a digitized surface.
I have chosen to work with the sound of a whale song as it is as expressive as a human voice, and some of its timbral characteristics are reminiscent of bass clarinet. What inspired me to write a piece about the whale was a snapshot from my memory. As I was taking off on a plane and looked down through my window, I saw in the crystal clear waters of the Pacific Ocean hundreds of whales, swimming as a pod on their migration path. The surreal beauty of this moment – seeing these majestic creatures from the sky above – ignited the idea of writing this piece for bass clarinet and pre-recorded soundtrack, based on the whale song.
The score has one multiphonic. The piece is performed with pre-recorded track and click track. All performance materials are provided by the composer via email request and upon purchasing the score.