Flutist Sasha Ishov performs unaccompanied flute repertoire from the 20th and 21st centuries. Selections include works by Alvin Singleton, Heinz Holliger, Liza Lim, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Javier Álvarez, and others. More info here.
PROGRAM
Argoru III (1971)
Alvin Singleton (b. 1940)
Diaphonic Suite No. 1 (1930)
Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953)
Sonatina (1978)
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025)
Lucid Dreaming (2022)
Liza Lim (b. 1966)
(t)air(e) (1980/83)
Heinz Holliger (b. 1939)
Ternura de las Grullas (1995)
Alba Potes (b. 1954)
Lluvia de Toritos (1984)
Javier Álvarez (1956-2023)
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” (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.”
Composed in 1930 and not published by an American music publisher until after her death, Diaphonic Suite No. 1 by Ruth Crawford Seeger reflects her place among the American ultramodernists. A major influence on Elliott Carter and the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, she worked closely with the leading modernist composers of her time. The third movement, for solo flute or oboe, is conceived as a “triple passacaglia.” A seven-note series unfolds simultaneously within each measure, across the 7/8 downbeats, and in the opening tones of the movement’s seven sections, creating a tightly interlocked formal design. In the mid-1930s, Crawford Seeger shifted toward folk music research, working with John Lomax and Alan Lomax. She is the mother of folk musician Pete Seeger.
In her Sonatina (1978) for solo flute, 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 explored themes of transcendence and constraint, a reflection 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 is perhaps a metaphor for artistic expression within constrained societies, where sound and silence are both acts 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.
Liza Lim’s music forms an interconnected world in which each piece evolves from the materials, techniques, and poetic ideas of earlier works. As with other composers, close collaborations with performers shape how the music sounds and behaves, creating a shifting ecosystem of breath and motion. One recurring gesture in her flute writing is a technique adapted from Salvatore Sciarrino’s “double trill,” in which finger motions combined with embouchure and air-pressure oscillations produce a flickering effect. Lim also makes extensive use of multiphonics, which is the production of more than one simultaneous pitch, an intensely personal process that reveals the unique physical and sonic identity of the player.
Lucid Dreaming (2022) explores techniques for notating repetitions, interpolations, and temporal loops that subtly shift with each recurrence. 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 exists in 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.
Heinz Holliger’s (t)air(e) plays on the word “air,” using breath as both a sound and structural element. Holliger—himself a virtuoso oboist—pushes the flutist to the edges of audibility, exploring harmonics, multiphonics, and a fragility deeply connected to the act of breathing. The piece feels suspended, as if sound is constantly forming and dissolving. Silence and resonance become structural elements, as the flutist blurs the boundary between pitched tone and noise. Breathing, and the suspension of it, both generate the sonic material of the music and become the music itself.
Inspired by the traditional shakuhachi melody Tsuru no Sugomori (“The Nesting of Cranes”), Ternura de las Grullas (“Tenderness of Cranes”) by Alba Potes juxtaposes contemporary Western flute techniques with phrasing and pacing reminiscent of shakuhachi music. A Colombian composer who lived in New York for many years, Potes crafts an intimate soundscape that captures the fluidity of breath and exploratory textures, blurring lines between influences and aesthetics. Her work often engages with cross-cultural dialogue, reflecting both Latin American and international contemporary music traditions.
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 transforms 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.