For the Love of Bees (2010; revised 2019) — Anna Rubin (United States)

6 pieces for Piano and Narrator

For the Love of Bees is a six-part suite.  It was originally composed for Dr. Margaret Lucia in a solo piano version with four parts [Honeybee Works] in 2010. Rubin expanded the piece in 2019 at the request of Sandrine Erdely-Sayo, director of the Piano on the Rocks International Festival, and added a narrative. 

The idea for the piece was generated by her growing awareness of hive declines due to Colony Collapse Disorder, climate change, parasites and other causes. As Rubin learned more about bees, including interviewing experts at the US Department of Agriculture, she also learned more about their social behavior and their critical role as pollinators.  The narrative is also available in Spanish (Por El Amor de Las Abejas.)

For each section, Rubin used some of the striking characteristics of bees as a natural metaphor along with a particular pianistic technical challenge.  Each section also explores a particular compositional/harmonic issue, in the manner of the traditional etude.  In various sections, Rubin was responding to the piano compositions of Debussy, Chopin, Bartok, Messiaen and the Cuban jazz pianist, Chucho Valdés. 

Ann adds: I am thrilled that my friend and colleague the poet Athena Kildegaard has collaborated on these with me! 

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Anna Rubin’s lyrical and dynamic music has been heard around the globe. She has composed many chamber and orchestral pieces as well as works that integrate acoustic instruments with electronic media. Her work was introduced on the world stage in Germany in 1982. Her work has been recorded on the Capstone, Everglade, SEAMUS, Albany and Neuma labels. Virtuoso performers of her work include Airi Yoshioka, F. Gerard Errante, Madeleine Shapiro, Tom Buckner, Maria Loos, Margaret Lucia, and Sandrine Erdely-Sayo. Ensembles such as Nash Ensemble, Da Capo, and Relâche have also performed her works.

Recent commissions include those from Piano on the Rocks International Festival (2021 and 2022, Sedona, AZ) and the Washington International Chorus (2019, Washington, DC). Among her awards are those from the Delta Ensemble in Amsterdam, Arts Councils in Ohio, New York and Maryland, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the National Orchestral Association.

Performances of her works in New York City have been hosted in Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Roulette and BargeMusic.  Performances have also taken place on college campuses including Princeton University, the California Institute of the Arts, New York University, and Wesleyan University.  Her work has been featured at two New York City Electroacoustic Festivals (2016, 2019) and at several conferences of the Society for Electroacoustic Music, US (from 2000-2019).  She has been in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Brahmshaus in Baden-Baden Germany, and the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music.   

Rubin was on the faculty of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County from 2002 to 2018. Before that, she taught at Oberlin College and Lafayette College.  She earned her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts where her principal teachers were Mel Powell, Earle Brown, and Pauline Oliveros. She completed a doctorate in composition with Paul Lansky at Princeton University.

Rubin has been an active citizen in the new music community, serving as board member and president of the International Alliance for Women in Music and as member of the editorial board of Perspectives of New Music. In the 1970s, she was a founding member of the Los Angeles collective, the Independent Composers Association and she helped organize some of the first conferences focusing on women and music in southern California.

In the Fall of 2021, Anna wrote Reflections on Composing, an eight-page document where she looks back on her life and career in music.