Chamber Music

Written in 2019 for the Cara Quartet, CARA received its world premiere at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, NY, in February of 2020. The first of two separate movements- each composed for flute, violin, viola and cello- cara (to me) had always meant beloved, darling, dear, loved one, and also precious. As I was inspired by the warmth and depth of feeling conjured by the related meanings of cara, I didn’t learn that there was yet another meaning of this word until I’d finished composing the music! Regardless, this other meaning was the inspiration for the Cara Quartet’s name. The music is colorful, warm, dreamy and passionate, and aims to create a lush sense of longing. Using a silvery flute line which contrasts well with rich-sounding altered chords played and sustained by three string instruments, I desired to create a palette of vivid, warm colors for the listener to experience.

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Chamber Music

I love looking at beautiful little timepieces and remember being fascinated long ago by the tiny movements of a small, gilded gold mantel clock with a glass cover.
This timepiece, with its many precisely moving parts, stills holds my imagination and makes me want to travel back in time to Italy. Thus the Italian title Carino Piccolo Orologio (Cute Little Clock).

Carino Piccolo Orologio serves as the introductory first movement to Mandolin on the Moon.
While both movements feature time, this first movement represents an older era and includes segments that represent different parts of the day. The opening describes a beautiful morning in a lovely room with a charming atmosphere. Listen closely to the very beginning- you’ll hear the little clock parts moving together!

The following section transports you to Venice, where a gondolier glides his boat along the canal. Traveling again, you’ll find yourself walzing through another section. On and on you’ll journey while keeping time with the Cute Little Clock...until it winds down.

Chamber Music

Inspired by the poem Las Cadenas del Amor by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the music practically flowed out of my soul when I began writing it. Full of colorful yet chilling darkness with moments of heat, it also displays degrees of light in various prism forms which alternate with an occasional flash.

The poem seemed to beg me to co-create degrees of range, texture, musical color, intensity and mystery, using mezzo soprano as a vehicle reflected by piano, flute and alto flute.

Written at the invitation of Anna Tonna for Mujeres en Musica to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’s and Shakespeare’s deaths (1616, one day apart), the premiere performances were given in Madrid and New York in 2017 and '18. Writing Las Cadenas del Amor was a work of love.

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Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Solo Cello

DAY AND NIGHT CANNOT DWELL TOGETHER are words attributed to the Suquamish and Duwamish leader Chief Seattle, who believed in ecological responsibility and respect for Native Americans’ land rights. The words mean just as day and night cannot exist together, the white man and Native American people cannot be together. However, Chief Seattle did forge friendship with a white settler David Swinson ‘Doc’ Maynard “one of Seattle’s primary founders and, compared to other white settlers, a relative advocate of Native American rights. Maynard’s friendship with Chief Seattle was important in the formation of the city of Seattle, and it was Maynard who proposed the city be named for this important chief.” * *Wikipedia

The words Day and Night Cannot Dwell Together are part of a speech given during the signing of the Point Elliot Treaty of 1885, which guaranteed fishing rights and reservations for certain tribes, including the Suquamish Port Madison. Reservations were not designated for the Duwamish and some other Native American peoples.

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Duos

Dreaming in a Bed of Flowers is meant to highlight the importance of natural habitats for plants - in this case, flowers - in addition to animals and humans. An awareness of the effects of wildlife, natural beauty and the settings of flowers that need air, soil, water, and sunlight for survival and growth is unique when one is surrounded by a garden full of color and frangrance unlike anything else. Roses are legendary for their scent, bright colors & petals, but exotic species including Bird of Paradise, Plumeria and some some cultivars of Amaryllis including Peacock, Pink Floyd and Dancing Queen (love the musical/band names although the flowers were here first) are also said to be very fragrant! To me, different fragrances are dark or light and have different types of shapes. But I have synesthesia... Nonetheless, Dreaming in a Bed of Flowers is about the flute and piano, and what they convey.

The flute is the dreamer who dreams about moods that different flowers create.

The piano keys are the flowers, portraying fragrances, color, texture, shape, and details. Flowers seem creative to me. Plants are also affected by music But that's anothet story!

Different keys and some brief chord changes in this music depict the brevity of some species' lives as well as the heady frangrance that affects our moods with their smell-spell (my description of this phenomenon). Each piano arpeggio is an image of a petal opening up.

How heady, beautiful and life-affirming might it be to dream in a bed of flowers? How sad and limited would our world be without them?

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Chamber Music

The concept of something happening in the future has always engaged my interest. Like a mystery or even a surprise, something happening eventually can hold much potential!

Regarding the future: while my darker side pushes my imagination to terrible and deep depths, my optimism offers dreamy, bright, colorful, fluid ideas of grandeur, fun and smoother sailing. Who knows the future, after all?

Perhaps your other side will surprise you (eventually) as you listen To Eventually...eventually!

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Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Written for alto flute, clarinet and piano, the music of Februarium represents Northern cold, cloudy textures, refreshingly shiny clear ice, cloudy ice and black ice. Emotionally dark or light, and cloudy, this second and shortest month of the year is potent, yet feels comfortingly gentle to me.

The name Februarium comes from Februum (“means of purification, an offering”), via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15th in the old Roman calendar”*. Its meaning is ‘of February’, and this genderless Latin name is the shortest month of the year in the Roman calendar (c. 700 BCE), Julian calendar (46 BCE) and Gregorian calendar (from 1582).

I’ve always had a fondness for cloudy, cool and colder months with alternating dark and light days. Quite fitting that the premiere of Februarium took place in February (2019) in the Northeast!


Pamela Sklar

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Chamber Music

Written for Englewinds, Figure 8 Dance is a companion piece for honey bees as they follow the choreography and message of a figure 8 pattern and leave their home to forage for life-sustaining nectar and pollen. The instruments each represent a character or thing: the bassoon is the Queen Bee, the flute depicts worker bees. The rich, mellow-sounding English horn represents the comfort and safety of their home- the hive.

The jaunty opening melody is played by the bassoon, symbolizing the dance being ‘sung‘ by the Queen to encourage her workers to get busy. About two minutes into the piece, the mood becomes suspenseful, as the workers are told they must
leave their hive, fly out into the world and begin foraging for flowers, weeds and trees that provide them with their source of nourishment.

Once outside among the flowers, the workers begin to enjoy the fresh air and magnificent floral sights and smells (bar 45, triplets).
Eventually, the bees become so excited in their travels through gardens and flower beds that they grow intoxicated. When the Queen bee hears about this (from a tattler-forager) she summons them back to work...and back to work they go.

After some time, a human starts swatting some of the bees, and they warn the others that the person is also armed with a toxic spray.
Flying around ever-faster, they finally make their way back to the nest, just in time for another dance (this time it begins in a minor key). Now they make figure 8’s faster than ever and even introduce some new dance steps!

Chamber Music

Since childhood I have always felt inspired by Native American cultures. Their artistic, expressive, intuitive spiritual ways, incredible skills and natural respect for nature, animals, and their elders speaks to my soul and engages my imagination.

When I first heard of Joy Harjo, the Native American writer, three-term Poet Laureate of the Untied States, and artist of the Muscogee Creek Nation, I was further motivated to learn more about her. Reading her memoir Crazy Brave made such a strong impression on me, and that led to my composing Flashes of Inspiration and Joy. This composition is a tribute to her.

Early in 2019 I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Joy and share the 2Flutes’ recording of this composition, which is dedicated to her and featured on the 2Flutes’ 2019 album New York Tapestries.

My 2012 debut recording A Native American-Jazz Tribute/A Tune for America originally put me on a wonderful path to writing, playing, and recording more Native American-inspired music.

"...haunting interaction...beautiful...evocative tonal pallet. This CD is a listening joy." Patricia George, FLUTE TALK

"More engaging still is Flashes of Inspiration and Joy, written by Pamela Sklar... This is beautifully constructed and written by someone with a clear gift of melody; and Sklar knows how to showcase that melody, too..." Colin Clarke, FANFARE MAGAZINE

"Pamela Sklar’s hypnotic Native American flute solo... an absorbing, spiritually resonant atmosphere. Sklar’s warmly immersive playing bespeaks a deep involvement with instrument and idiom alike. Careful attention to line, phrasing, color, tempo, and ensemble..." Robert Schulslaper, FANFARE MAGAZINE

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Solo Flute

Written for a Fifteen Minutes of Fame competition, this brief competition-winning flute solo Flavours of Color was composed quickly (almost in a few minutes)! Influenced at first by a brief silvery and blue vision, the music grew rapidly when I felt the energy of the flutist for whom the music was composed. This one-minute flute solo begins slowly and builds excitingly to bursts of fast & exciting energetic color throughout. It ends slowly, much like the opening.

Dedicated to the Latvian flutist Alisa Anna Alksne, my most exciting writing is inspired by themes that include specific people, a concept, images and places past and present.

An earlier one-minute composition that I wrote In a Minute! for violin (doubling bongos) and cello, was selected for inclusion in a program of sixty 60-second pieces for a program directed by Robert Voisey, titled 60x60 at Spectrum, NYC, in 2012. In 2001, the director Voisey created The American Composer Timeline, the first in-depth listing of American composers from 1690 to the present, to appear on the Internet.

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Chamber Music

Flow is that sought-after state of being, feeling, situation, performance, groove, zone, quality or lifestyle that seems often brief or sometimes elusive. Just when things seem to be lining up, something else starts! It could be any loud, soft, or sudden sound. Or thing! Maybe it's the noise in my head.

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Solo improvisation

Flute Ensemble/Flute Choir

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Chamber Music

Flutists love to talk! We also love to play together! Like most people, my flutist colleagues and friends all have something to say! Having a view, visually, can be wonderful (which I hope rings true when others play this piece) but another (point of) view can require sorting out things (who wants to play bass flute?) Rehearsals? Scheduling can get tricky with more than two people, especially with musicians whose schedules frequntly change. Then there are views about programming, content, order, what to include or cut. Many flutists have great points of view about music, musical styles, and programs and this is my tribute to my wonderful flute friends and colleagues. Full disclosure: originally, I imagined having this performed in front of a large window with gorgeous views of flowers, trees, blue sky, and colorful birds. Maybe a deer or two too. The view would be lovely, wouldn't it?

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Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Halloween is one of my favorite times, taking place during my favorite month of my favorite season. Just knowing the origin of this 2,000+ year old custom which originated with the Celts, makes me think about the supernatural... and some various mysterious activities (which may be going on at any time). Along with this, the societal permission & encouragement for us to deviate from the (esp.) weekday sartorial convention is very appealing to me. To be free of constraints (think or the noose-tie); to express one's dramatic, weird, bizarre or otherwise quite unusual (and fully creative) side...or self, is fun for me! Twilight, with its texture, color, enchanting lighting & atmosphere, is also my favorite time of day. It is calming, dreamy and transformative for me.

The vibes represented by the vibes played in this piece are meant to sound unfamiliar & mysterious, ethereal/celestial, soothing. One may not see something different, but one will feel. Something. The flute, more familiar-sounding, is sometimes at odds with the vibes. What do you think this means?

© Pamela Sklar

Chamber Music

When I first heard of Hatshepsut I was intrigued because of her many abilities and achievements. The daughter, sister and wife of a king, she was generally considered to be a pharaoh who inaugurated a long peaceful era. She re-established international trading relationaships previously lost during foreign occupation and brought great wealth to Egypt. That wealth enabled Hatshepsut to initiate building projects that raised the caliber of Ancient Egyptian architecture to a standard- comparable to classical architecture, that would not be rivaled by any other culture for one thousand years. She managed to rule for about twenty years (1478-1458 BC).

As I read about and observed photographs of statues, reliefs and hieroglyphs of Hatshepsut, I wondered what her voice sounded like. I also thought about what some aspects of her personality might have been like.

It was surprising to me to read that she suffered from diabetes and arthritis and that her death was attributed to a carcinogenic skin lotion which led to her having bone cancer.

Solo Flute

Chamber Music

Dedicated to and commissioned by Hoff-Barthelson Music School's Flute Clubs, Homecoming is an arrangement of Welsh Lullaby. Previously arranged (beautifully) by the Flute Clubs' former director Elly Ball, I was asked to make a new arrangement which would co-feature exciting jazz chords and phrasing, and unusual unexpected ideas.

I had a lot of fun writing this!

After the performance, a letter on my behalf included this: "the Flute Clubs at Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale commissioned Pamela to write a piece that involved all of their students from all levels. The difficulty of the project was to write parts that the young players could handle while keeping the advanced players challenged, and the audience charmed. The performance was a tremendous success and in fact helped raise money for the purchase of new instruments for the school."

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Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Journey to the Afterlife describes a process which involves amazing encounters never experienced on Earth. Multiple hues of darkness, foreign colors, lack of a heartbeat, non-physical sounds, perceived spirituality, and extraordinary varieties of energy all contribute to the quality of each journey taken by each individual.

The four instruments included here- viola, flute, bass clarinet and contrabassoon, represent a mysterious, colorfully darkening, slow (as perceived from the Earth Plane) and inner process. We can hear the music coming from a vast region light-years away, as we travel (but never move) through this field on the way to the afterlife.

© Pamela Sklar

Chamber Music

Albert Einstein’s theory of light, which revolutionized our understanding of time and space, is based on his astonishing recognition that light always travels at a constant speed, regardless of how fast you're moving when you measure it. Einstein's explorations into the fundamental properties of light also laid the groundwork for his most impressive achievement, the General Theory of Relativity. His first great thought experiment came when he was about 16. He had run away from his school in Germany, which he hated because it emphasized rote learning rather than visual imagination, and enrolled in a Swiss village school based on the educational philosophy of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed in encouraging students to visualize concepts. While there, Einstein tried to picture what it would be like to travel so fast that you caught up with a light beam. If he rode alongside it, he later wrote, “I should observe such a beam of light as an electromagnetic field at rest.” In other words, the wave would seem stationary. Einstein saw the universe as a puzzle, and he delighted in trying to solve its mysteries. All he needed to contemplate the cosmos was his most valuable scientific tool—his imagination.

The Light-Beam Rider, if played super fast, would only cause the players to become totally out of synch with one anothjer and play wrong notes! Forget about a beam of light, its particles and wave frequencies! However, when I first read about Einstein wanting to ride along a beam of light, I became inspired by the old-fashioned merry-go-round, and how much fun it could be to play this music while sitting on the wooden horses and riding around in (slow) circles on the carousel! At least we wouldn't crash and burn (musically)!

*sections of the first paragraph: AMNH.com and other sources.

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Chamber Music

Composed for mandolinist Joyce Balint as a musical component of today’s exhibit*, Mandolin on the Moon portrays the excitement leading up to the launch and journey of ourcountry’s first manned lunar landing.

The music co-features string techniques of bowing as well as plucking, with all four instruments sometimes plucking simultaneously. They also co-feature time, a main element of speed.
Musically, Mandolin on the Moon addresses speed (tempo) and is played at 100 beats perminute, quarter note = 100. With the tempo marking swiftly, it opens with steady rhythmic pulsing of eighth notes, reflecting the public’s mounting excitement surrounding the anticipation of Apollo 11’s launch.

About two minutes into the piece, the tempo slows down. Almost there! Realizing how very farwe are from Earth and wondering what we might see on the moon and how we’ll feel beingabout 239,000 miles away from our planet, we look in awe at this solar system. What would it feel like to play an instrument in microgravity?

In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo is known as the god of music, sun, and more- a great union of music and outer space! Additionally, it’s fitting to think that this god, for whom Project Apollo was named, is represented by the lyre, an ancient string instrument similar to the mandolin, both having ancient origins, plucked/played without a bow and tuned in the treble(upper) range.

In the Spring of 2018, I visited Houston’s Johnson Space Center and observed the historic mission operations control room. In addition to seeing a Saturn V rocket, I loved seeing golden
robonauts in various versions of human torsos and full bodies, as well as a golden spider with all eight legs. Who (in the world) could know that almost exactly one year later I would write Mandolin on the Moon and have it premiered for the *Hudson River Museum’s First Lunar Landing exhibit- in the Planetarium?

Chamber Music

A Memory of You can represent a person, place, or time; a setting, a moment in time, a feeling, a dream. Sentiments are a powerful part of our memory. This music (version II) has made various people smile, chuckle, feel ecstatic, feel beauty, cry with sadness, feel like they're floating. Your reaction is completely valid and valued. After all, sentiments -especially nostalgia- are powerful.

Chamber Music

A Memory of You is very personal. It may represent a person, place, or time; a setting, a moment in time, a feeling, a dream. Sentiments are a powerful part of our memory. This music has made various people smile, wonder, feel ecstatic, feel beauty, cry with sadness, speechless. Your reaction is completely valid and valued. After all, sentiments -especially nostalgia- are powerful.

Chamber Music

For many years I’ve been entranced and spiritually nourished sitting by and listening to oceans in America and elsewhere. Approaching bliss, I become mesmerized while embracing the rhythmic textural sounds of the waves. Staring at glistening light over various shades of blue or blue-green water during a late afternoon, I also wish for the oceans’ health to stay strong.

The Ocean We Want is a dynamic and passionate tribute to the sustainability efforts taking place by the United Nations as our vital oceans suffer from climate change and pollution.

The opening of The Ocean We Want portrays the peaceful magnitude, great depth and incredible marine life living deep below the surface. As the music continues, it moves through stormy sections alternating with calmer classical segments meant to reflect the majestic power, beauty and dignity of our oceans’ naturally occurring waves, sometimes gentle yet increasingly volatile. The final section is what I hear when the sun wanes gently in the distance.

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Flute and Mixed Instruments

Chamber Music

Double Reeds

A whimsical ride through earlier times followed by enrgetic play-jousting.

From Pam's imagnation, her love of double reeds, the outdoors, horses, and time travel in general.

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Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Inspired by photographs, world cultural documentaries, more contemporary (20th century) movies and my imagination, I envisioned how the world I lived in and the world beyond might feel if I transported myself from Earth through dimensions beyond the physical plane.

This is what happrens when I daydream and hear music playing -- accompanied by visual sights -- in my head!

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Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Chamber Music

The Inward Journey is the sequel to Third Eye, and is a very sustained, slow-moving, meditative and probing experience musically. It is the actual journey (rather than a description) of leaving your world, the physical Earth plane and all things familiar, including your comfort zone. The journey is hypnotic and it might 'test' your patience, since some phrases don't resolve more immediately as we experience in our popular (and much of Classical) music culture. Nonetheless, there is an energy coming through, which overrides the initial Patience Stage- waiting/trying to hear or feel something/settling our thoughts/letting go of where we are as we begin to transition in order to move into 'being in the moment'. The ending of this particular journey sets up a mystical atmosphere.

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Chamber Music

Written for Eight Strings and a Whistle, Third Eye and the Inward Journey represent separate but connected journeys towards self-awakening, awareness, enlightenment and greater spirituality.

The first journey Third Eye 'opens' with a solo flute line beginning with an slow crescendo on F#. Quickly flowing from that F# is a brief and rapid six-note phrase. This solo represents a brief ceremonial calling- a willingness - to open and seek one’s inner truth. Thus, the odyssey can begin.

The three instruments share similar energy- the viola and cello vibrating wood via bowed or plucked strings, the flute using life breath to vibrate a silver tube.

Throughout the piece, longer stretches of uneven time signatures and differing lengths of sustained notes enable listeners to experience a feeling of being in the moment without measuring time as we do in the physical plane.

Third Eye ends much like the opening with a single suspended flute note, now a high E. A seventh above the opening tone, this E symbolizes the seventh chakra (the crown chakra) which relates to pure consciousness.

The Inward Journey is a very sustained, slow-moving, meditative and probing experience musically, as it is the actual journey (rather than a description) of leaving your world, the physical Earth plane and all things familiar, including your comfort zone at times. The journey is hypnotic and it might 'test' your patience, since some phrases don't resolve more immediately as we experience in our popular (and much of Classical) music culture. Nonetheless, there is an energy coming through, which overrides the initial Patience Stage- waiting/trying to hear or feel something/settling our thoughts/letting go of where we are as we begin to transition in order to move into 'being in the moment'.

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• Digital Score (PDF)10
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Chamber Music

I have had a lifelong fascination with and great respect for Native American cultures. Their neverending struggles, highly imaginative artistic vision, spirituality, forms of dress & style, customs, belief in animal spirits and their deep respect for & connection with nature and different types of people (orientation, physical impairments) and high regard for their elders inspired me to write A Tune for America (included on the original recording of A Native American-Jazz Tribute). Musically the two styles compliment one another; the minor pentatonic scales of their flutes connect well with blues scales, altered notes and varied chord voicings used by great jazz artists.

(Please note: sheet music temporarily unavailable) The recording of the originlal version is available on track 9).

Solo Flute

This unaccompanied flute solo Umoja (Unity in Swahili), is a tribute to peoples globally, especially to those who face situations of much opposition and discord. Umoja is one of the seven symbols of Kwanzaa *, an African harvest festival tradition celebrated in various parts of West and Southeast Africa. The wonderful meaning of Umoja inspired me to write this music. Personally, unity and working together are beautiful concepts!

* Founded by Maulana Karenga. https://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/ *

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