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Composer's note: 

Lewis Nielson - You Choose - Sarah Pyle, flute; Ran Duan, piano

Program Note: You Choose (2010) is a text-setting by Roque Dalton in which the chamber players become singers.  Like other works I have written, my hope is to produce a sense of community amongst the performers and to break the plane between audience and performer by placing the players’ vulnerabilities as vocalists “on-view,” as it were, and allowing listeners to relate to what the takes place more equally.  Dalton’s poetry, always attacking any form of officiousness and over-organized governance, consists of a speech given to like-minded comrades that, owing to the speaker being a little less than coherent owing to drink, ends in a warm but none-too-clear discourse on love. Very much of the people, I would hope that the vocal performance—very much of an uncultivated, spur-of-the-moment vocal style—would take place in the spirit and same haphazard collision of approaches presented in the poetry itself.

Editor's note:  The Concertino is in one movement with contrasting sections containing expressive
melodies, driving rhythms, and a cadenza with contemporary techniques such as flutter
tonguing, multiphonics, glissandos, and fingered microtones. All original dynamics,
articulations, and tempos are reflected in the revised piano reduction. In addition, I have
added some markings that Roseman made to my music when I studied the piece with him.

-Ann Knipschild

"The Star Theatre" uses digitally processed historic footage of early 20th-century theatrical performances, as well as photographs of old theaters and stages, within a contemplative work for clarinet, piano and electronic sound.