Variant Scenarios (Work for Wind Ensemble and Percussion)

Tamar Diesendruck’s favored compositional medium is virtuosic chamber music, although she has also composed solo, orchestral, and vocal works. Her music is often characterized as having a very wide range of expression. Works include experimental pieces like "8 —> ∞" for eight cellos (eight tends toward infinity) and unusually slow, stark music like "the grief that does not speak.” Professor Diesendruck’s work has been performed throughout the US and in Europe by an array of excellent performers, including the Pro Arte Quartet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Lions Gate Trio, Speculum Musicae, New Millenium Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Phantom Arts Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New Century Players, League of Composers-ISCM, Earplay, Musica D'Oggi, Composers, Inc., Parnassus, Washington Square Contemporary Music, Prism Players, Music on the Edge, San Francisco Chamber Singers, Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, Cabrini Quartet, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, avant garde violinist Carla Kihlstedt, pianist Donald Berman, and numerous other groups and soloists. 

While at Radcliffe, she is interested in working with a research partner who knows Sibelius, Logic, and/or Digital Performer software very well or, if there is a music student who is also a programmer or interested in the use of the computer, to help in the composition itself; this is something to be discussed. She is seeking a student who wants to figure out how to use Sibelius to do nontraditional notation and to use other programs to facilitate composing by editing versions of sketches.

The student might benefit by having to develop better skills and by discussing compositional strategies.