David Loeb

3 Meditations

Three Meditations for Alto Flute Solo by David Loeb: Autumn Snow, Winterscape, and The Gray Sea and the Long Black Land. Autumn Snow was originally composed for an ‘alto’ shakuhachi (a fourth lower than the standard size), reworked for alto flute to allow the expansion of the range and facilitate certain successions of tones, while preserving the character of the original instrument. The opening of Winterscape comes from another shakuhachi composition, but otherwise this is a new piece, albeit in the spirit of the original. The Gray Sea and the Long Black Land is the first line of a poem by the 17th century English poet John Clare. The poem begins as a nocturnal landscape, continues with a solitary boatman landing his boat, and ends with a rendezvous of lovers.