Experience an evening of bold creativity at the second concert, (un)familiar, of the 2025 La Crosse New Music Festival featuring Chicago-based flutist Sasha Ishov. Ishov will perform works by composers he has worked with, some of whom have recently passed. Delicate, sensitive and innovative, this program presents a range of colorful works and invites the audience to re-imagine virtuosity. All performances are free and open to the public, no reservations required.
PROGRAM
Argoru III (1971)
Alvin Singleton (b. 1940)
Aubade (1982)
Libby Larsen (b. 1950)
Sonatina (1978)
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025)
Euterpe’s Caprice (2008)
Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964)
unruly clock etude (2025)
Paul Novak (b. 1998)
Bioluminescence (2019)
Liza Lim (b. 1966)
Lucid Dreaming (2022)
Liza Lim
Unanswered Questions (1995)
Tristan Murail (b. 1947)
Lluvia de Toritos (1984)
Javier Álvarez (1956-2023)
PROGRAM NOTES
Argoru III (1971 is the third in a series of solo works by Alvin Singleton, with argoru meaning “to play” in the Ghanaian Twi language. Singleton draws on a wide range of influences—“from Mahler to Monk, Bird to Bernstein, James Baldwin to Bach, Santana to Price” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Argoru III reflects this fusion of styles, balancing bursts of kinetic energy with moments of spacious lyricism. Composer and author Carman Moore writes in his performance notes: “Quicksilver runs and leaps alternate with cantabile moments, like light falling through trees in a forest.”
Aubade (1982) by Libby Larsen takes its title from several sources: auba (from alba – “first light,” Spanish), alborada (“dawn,” Spanish), and albus (“white,” Latin). Larsen writes that “the word means morning music, as opposed to the serenade, or evening music. It is a song or a poem to greet the dawn and usually denotes music of a quiet, idyllic nature. It is also seen as a morning love song, or a song or poem of parting lovers at dawn. In the 17th century noblemen held gatherings and feasts in the mornings for which aubades were composed. They were played in the open air just as the sun began to break the horizon.” The result is a meditation on renewal—music that listens as much as it sings.
Sonatina (1978) for solo flute by Sofia Gubaidulina uses breath marks of varying lengths to shape the work’s dramatic pacing, creating moments of tense silence. A deeply spiritual composer, Gubaidulina often explored themes of transcendence and constraint—reflections of the political repression she faced in the USSR, where her music was criticized for its avant-garde tendencies. Her use of silence as a structural element becomes a metaphor for artistic expression within constrained societies, where both sound and silence act as forms of resistance and revelation. Other works for flute, such as Sounds of the Forest and The Deceitful Face of Hope and Despair, further demonstrate her philosophical and literary influences, drawing inspiration from poetry, mysticism, and nature.
Euterpe’s Caprice (2008) by Augusta Read Thomas and unruly clock etude (2025) by Paul Novak are paired here as brief reflections on collaboration and community. I first met both composers at the Aspen Music Festival, where I was a fellow with the Contemporary Ensemble and premiered Read Thomas’s Abracadabra (Suncatchers) and Novak’s Seven Dreams About My Body—both written with my flute playing in mind. Performing their music is a gesture of gratitude for the ongoing relationships that sustain new music’s ecosystem of connection and exchange between composers and performers.
Euterpe’s Caprice (2008), dedicated to flutist Claire Chase, is a vibrant and playful tribute to Euterpe—the muse of flute playing and lyric poetry in Greek mythology. The piece sparkles with dance-like energy, weaving rapid flourishes, rhythmic vitality, and shimmering expressivity into a display of color and motion. A prolific and acclaimed composer, Augusta Read Thomas is known for her bold lyricism and masterful handling of instrumental color—qualities that shine in Euterpe’s Caprice, where the flute’s agility and brilliance take center stage.
unruly clock etude (2025) by Paul Novak adapts a soprano saxophone work premiered in October 2025 in Chicago by Phil Pierick. Compact yet restless, it compresses rhythmic play, mechanical precision, and bursts of color into a miniature study of motion. The result is a witty and virtuosic exploration of pulse and elasticity. The piece also gestures toward future collaborations, reflecting the trust and ease that emerge from a shared musical language. A flutist himself, Novak writes with an insider’s understanding of the instrument’s expressive and technical possibilities.
Liza Lim’s music forms an interconnected world in which each work evolves from the materials, techniques, and poetic ideas of earlier pieces. As with many contemporary composers, close collaborations with performers shape how her music sounds and behaves, creating a living ecosystem of breath and motion. A recurring gesture in her flute writing is a technique adapted from Salvatore Sciarrino’s “double trill,” in which finger movements combined with embouchure and air-pressure oscillations produce a flickering, unstable resonance. Lim also makes extensive use of multiphonics—the simultaneous production of multiple pitches—an intensely personal process that reveals the unique physical and sonic identity of each performer.
Bioluminescence (2019) takes its title from the natural phenomenon of living organisms producing light. Liza Lim writes that the piece “explores flickering, shimmering qualities. Bioluminescence is the emission of light by organisms such as fireflies, fungi, algae, and many sea creatures.” The work draws on two vivid depictions of illumination.
Charles Darwin, describing his voyage on the Beagle, wrote: “While sailing in these latitudes on one very dark night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful spectacle. There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light… As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright, and the sky above the horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was not so utterly obscure as over the rest of the heavens.” Lim pairs this with a line drawn from Sappho: “Pick any path of concrete or crock to this spirited place whose orchard-body belongingly offers that flickering, altered aroma—groves on fire.” The flute becomes both observer and participant in this luminous environment, tracing fragile lines that pulse, flare, and dissolve.
Lucid Dreaming (2022) extends the sound world of Bioluminescence while exploring new techniques for notating repetitions, interpolations, and temporal loops that subtly shift with each recurrence. Liza Lim writes that “the musician may experience a kind of dissociation from a unitary flow of time or reality.” Like the state it describes, the music inhabits a space between awareness and illusion, where one recognizes the shape of a dream yet cannot fully control its logic. Familiar gestures return altered, as if refracted through shifting light. The work bends and folds musical time into loops that are never identical.
Unanswered Questions (1995) by Tristan Murail shares its solo flute material with Ethers (1984–85) but stands apart in character and intention. Murail writes: “In vain one might seek a reference to the work with a similar title by Charles Ives, and these questions remaining unanswered find a musical characterization in the ‘modest, unfinished melodies’ stemming from the flute harmonics.” The result is an introspective work of fragile color and quiet restraint. Its questions remain suspended, shaped by the breath of the instrument and the harmonic overtones that fade into silence.
Lluvia de Toritos (1984) by Javier Álvarez takes inspiration from Francisco Goya’s etching Lluvia de Toros, which depicts bulls floating surreally through the air. Álvarez translates this imagery into sound, blurring the line between dream and reality to evoke an aural “rain of bulls” that immerses the listener in a vivid, otherworldly landscape. The title may also allude to the Toritos de Pucará—small Peruvian bull figurines traditionally placed on rooftops for protection and prosperity. A Mexican composer with an expansive and eclectic career, Álvarez integrated folk instruments into experimental music, composed electroacoustic works, and engaged with a wide range of styles. His fascination with sonic texture and spatial movement animates Lluvia de Toritos, a playfully surreal and immersive sound world.
PERFORMER BIO
Sasha Ishov is a Russian-American flutist exploring how performance and research intersect to expand the flute’s expressive possibilities. Praised for his “well-sounded and lucid” artistry (San Diego Union-Tribune), his work bridges contemporary and classical repertoire through solo, chamber, and orchestral performances and experimental collaborations with technology and new media.
He has premiered more than 100 works and performed at the Ojai Music Festival, BBC Proms, Carnegie Hall, June in Buffalo, and the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz, as well as with the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and San Diego Symphony. Sasha co-leads Offscreen with percussionist Michael Jones and a new duo with bassist Will Yager. His project PrismaSonus, presented at Harvard University and the Qualcomm Institute, examines how technology shapes performer–composer communication.
He has lectured at UC San Diego and the North Carolina Governor’s School, and holds degrees from UC San Diego (DMA) and Eastman (BM). Sasha is a Miyazawa Artist.