Wreath of Silver Birds [9']

  The Wreath of Silver Birds was written in 1995 as an outdoor work for solo piccolo in honor of the 95^th birthday of composer Otto Luening, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Virginia Center for the Creative Art’s new timpani-topped gazebo.  Luening had played flute with James Joyce’s theatre and chamber music troupe in Vienna between the 20^th century’s world wars; and when Wallach wrote the work, she imagined the whistling piccolo melodies skimming across the Virginia Center’s magnificent lawns in the heat of Luening’s 95^th – and final – summer.  The title is adapted from a line by southern poet Maxwell Bodenheim (1883-1954):”…For death is a black slave with little silver birds a sleeping wreath on his head.”   The quote evokes both the ambiguous history of the South and Luening’s sweet self-serenade toward death, as full of music and enthusiasm as he’d ever been.