Alex Shapiro, composer: Desert Thoughts

Desert Thoughts

Like any exciting trip, this piece journeys from calm beginnings
to something unexpected.

(Flute, Clarinet and Piano).
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2008)
Published by Activist Music (ASCAP).
For Margaret Swinchoski.
One movement work. 20 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered in May 2009 by Palisades Virtuosi.

View pages of the score to Desert Thoughts for flute, clarinet, and piano

Listen to an audio clip of Desert Thoughts for flute, clarinet and piano
Watch!

Listen to an audio clip of Desert Tide for soprano saxophone and electronics
Listen to an audio clip of Desert Passage for violin, cello and piano
Purchase this score Score and parts available from Activist Music for $30.00 print; $21.00 digital.

Desert Thoughts is some of the most programmatic music I've composed, to the point where even the score itself contains maniacal little outbursts describing the visions that swept through my mind as the music wrote itself. The scene: the desert's arid stillness and the weight of the morning's expanding heat. A sudden rainstorm overtakes the landscape, forming instant pools of water over the cracked earth. The storm passes as quickly as it arrived, and as the birds and reptiles emerge to greet the fleeting moisture, the music ends as flowers strain upward against the bluest sky for those few passionate moments of their fullest bloom. Ahhh.

Well, none of the above was floating around in my head as I began the first measures; my initial working title had something to do with the ocean and being near it. But just after I started the piece, I took a road trip from my Malibu home to Tucson, Arizona. The drive was meditative, and best of all, the desert was in the full bloom of a May preceded by heavy rainfall. Everywhere I turned there were brilliant flowers bursting from inhospitable looking cactuses and scrub. It was truly beautiful.

All the stunning drives I've taken through deserts came to my senses at once, from a trip across the Sinai on a desolate road, to a trek across Mongolia's Gobi on no road at all. I also thought a lot about the extraordinary ten days I spent alone one July in the Mojave's Death Valley, immersing myself like a madwoman in its intense, 125 degree heat. I was rewarded with an equally intense and welcome inner clarity.

I need the ocean, but I'm fascinated by the desert and all the life it embraces. I returned home to the beach from Tucson four days later, and I finally knew what this music was really about.

"...the poignantly lyrical, soaring lines of Alex Shapiro's Desert Tide..."

— Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide, August 2007
You can read the entire review here.

Email Alex for the access code
to download a perusal score!

Desert Thoughts is featured on The Telos Trio's 2023 album, Fresh Wind. Click cover icon for more info.

Desert Tide is featured on Douglas Masek's 2007 CD, Saxtronic Soundscape, on Centaur Records. Click cover icon for more info.

Enjoy this beautiful recording
from oboist Casey Knowlton,
bassoonist Jacob Goforth,
and pianist Galen Dean Peiskee, Jr.,
performing a veresion of this piece titled Desert Notes
at Palacio de Congresos,
Granada, Spain, at the
2019 International Double Reed Society conference.

Enjoy this video of flutist Kim Breilein,
clarinetist Sue Collado, and pianist Kay Zavislak
performing a multimedia version of this piece with clarinet
titled Desert Thoughts
--along with Alex Shapiro's own photographs--
at the San Juan Community Theatre
in Friday Harbor, Washington on April 6, 2019:

Desert Thoughts, page 1

Desert Thoughts, page 10

Desert Thoughts, page 20

Also available as:

Desert Passage

(Violin, Cello and Piano)
Also available for Violin, Tenor Saxophone and Piano.
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2001)
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP).
One movement work. 20 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered at the World Saxophone Congress, July 2003
by The Cleveland Duo & James Umble: Stephen Warner, violin; Carolyn Gadiel Warner, piano and James Umble, tenor saxophone.

Desert Notes

(Oboe, Bassoon and Piano).
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2001)
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP).
One movement work. 20 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered in 2005 by ensemble Green, Los Angeles, CA.

Desert Story

(Clarinet, Bassoon and Piano).
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2019)
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP).
One movement work. 15 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Desert Run

(Oboe, Clarinet and Piano).
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2007)
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP).
One movement work. 20 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered in 2007 by Julia Heinen, Richard Kravchak and Shari Raynor, Los Angeles, CA.

Desert Waves

(5 string Electric Violin and Electronic soundscape on CD).
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2001)
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP).
One movement work. 16 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered in 2003 by violinist Sabrina Ann Berger.

Desert Tide

(Soprano Saxophone and Electronic soundscape on CD).
Total duration ca. 10 minutes (2005)
Published by Activist Music LLC (ASCAP).
One movement work. 16 pages, 8.5" x 11".

Premiered by Douglas Masek, September 2005 in Cape Town, South Africa. Recorded by Douglas Masek, July 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Audio clip performed by Douglas Masek.

Audio clip performed by Douglas Masek.