Piano Sonata in 3 movements, The first, Petit oiseaux inspired by the erratic movements of flocks of tiny birds which I tried to capture as a sketch, the second movement, Romanza, inspired by the symmetry of it's own form, and the third, Nocturne, was written at 3 in the morning, written while wearing a dressing gown, alas, no chamberpot to make the romantic setting complete!

Flautando (2004) is a one-movement concertino for flute and chamber ensemble. The work starts with an introduction by the ensemble where the different instruments take turns in an alternating series of contrasting patterns. The permutated repetition of these patterns leads to the first bold statement of the flute. This virtuosic and highly ornamented statement is accompanied by rhythmically punctuated chords in the piano, percussion, and strings as well as by a more sustained and imitative line in the clarinet. This first statement by the flute is followed by a quasi return to the opening fragmentary statements in the ensemble. The opening five minutes of the piece described above serve as a prelude to the two other thirds of the piece which are structured as a theme and variations. After the flute introduces the theme, the ensemble takes turns with the soloist in articulating twenty-two variations to the theme. The music is pulsating and rhythmic through out the entire piece. There is no pause between variations but rather shifts in texture, polyrhythmic configurations and timbral contrasts between the different variations. At about two thirds through out the piece, interlocking chords in the ensemble mark the climax of the work, which is followed by a descent in register and intensity through a quasi recapitulation of the sustained opening statement in the flute. The twenty-two variations are followed by a short coda bringing back the fragmentary discourse in both, flute and ensemble. Flautando was written for and it is dedicated to Peter Bacchus and Group XXI with whom I got acquainted during my stay in Barcelona in 2003.

Minerva's Dance was originally written for my wife, Lisa, for our first dance as husband and wife in 2004. Lisa loves tangos and the music of Astor Piazzolla, so I decide to write her a tango. I went into my studio and started laying down some tracks and a few days later I had it ready to go. Since this was a studio piece with long improvised sections only a small part of it was ever written down. This summer I decided to notate and expand the orchestration. The flute and soprano sax are featured soloist. The flute solo is a transcription of the original solo I played but the sax solo for this concert will be improvised.

Most of the Love Letters collection is written for piano and G.A.C. was originally written for two pianos. Twenty years ago I decided I want to write a composition based on my father initials. But every time I sat down to write it I was unhappy with the results. After my parents visit this summer, I had a feeling time was running out and I sat down to try again. I finally heard something I was satisfied with and in a couple of weeks I completed the piece. Not only did I use his initials but I used his full name putting rests in place of letter not used by music notation. I also added in my own name at the end. My father is very interested in running and has run marathons all over the world; so the A theme last 26.2 measures (26.2 miles is the length of a marathon) and the B theme is reminiscent of the music in the movie that inspired his desire to run, “Chariots of Fire”.

The 32 Grand Zoological Fantasy-Variations of Animal Farm takes for its subject the structure of Leslie Bricusse's Talk to the Animals, with each variant as four eight-bar phrases, plus a four-measure coda (36 total). The four variational subsets are in a biological progression derived from the work of Carolus Linnaeus as A. Cold-Blooded, B. Birds, C. Mammals I, and D. Mammals II. Variations have been premiered in Philadelphia, PA; Surrey, ME; and Tacoma, WA -- and the entire work, with videos, is online at the Dr. Mark Alburger channel on YouTube. The music is ideally paired with a coda of The Four Temperaments -- a quartet of human pieces on the same subject.

Musical gene-splicing may be heard in Cold-Blooded from Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Wasps and Tuba Concerto, F.J. Haydn's Symphony No. 94 ("Surprise"), Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4, Gilles Binchois's L'homme arme (treated as crab [retrograde] and mensuration [time] canons a la Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Pres), Camille Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals, John Williams's Jaws, Alburger's Mice and Men, Peter Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, Oliver Wallace's Alice in Wonderland, and Igor Stravinsky's The Flood.

The Banyan is a magnificent tree that can grow to gigantic proportions, spreading out laterally using aerial prop roots to cover a wide area, some trees reaching three quarters of an acre in size and living for hundreds of years. In this music the banyan tree represents, not only nature's roots, but our own roots as well, and our connectedness to all living things. River. A jazz piano groove sets the mood for solos as we travel down the jungle river. Giant banyan branches hang over the slow moving water and exotic birds fly overhead. Forest. Mallets introduce a world dominated by a gamelan layered forest where woodwinds and strings float through the canopy. Banyan roots grow over ancient stone temples and a mist surrounds the trees. The music of South East Asia and Indonesia is hypnotic. There seems to be vast possibilities here for the blending of East and West. Desert. A drone of strings, hand drums and bass create a pattern that forms the foundation for melodies on bouzouki and reeds. Though the desert of the Middle East is not an area associated with banyan trees, I chose to journey here, as the branches and roots of humanity are so interwoven, that it seemed appropriate.

In C consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats; each phrase may be repeated an indeterminate number of times. Musicians personally have control over which phrases they play: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase. The performance directions state that the musical ensemble should try to stay within a few phrases of each other. The sections must be played in order; rhythms may be augmented within phrases as needed. As detailed in some editions of the score, it is customary for one musician to play a pulse in repeated eighth notes during the course of the piece.

The piece begins in C major (patterns one through seven) with a strong emphasis on the mediant E with F neighboring and passing notes. After this begins a series of slow progressions to other chords suggesting a few subtle and ambiguous changes of key, including a striking series of E-minor interior sections in syncopated eighth-note patterns of threes. The last motiv alternates between B_ and G, seemingly the top end of a C dominant 7th chord.

Harriet March Page has pursued a life-long obsession with the arts: as actor, singer, writer, director, producer. Reeling off the decades, the 1970's was grand opera in and about San Francisco Bay Area; 1980's acting in plays and musicals with the Los Altos Conservatory Theatre; 1990's, writing and performing autobiographical monologues in San Francisco and producing monthly Sunday-Salons; and the 2000's, directing and producing as Artistic Director for Goat Hall Productions San Francisco Cabaret Opera on Potrero Hill, whose mission is presenting contemporary opera in English and premiering new opera theater by Bay Area composers in a cabaret setting. March Page is very happy to be a part of SFCCO, singing an orchestrated version of four songs from �The Wind God” part of a larger autobiographical work written by her with music composed by Mark Alburger which they like to call "Harriet's Verdian Ring".

Steve Adams is active both as a composer and as a performer on saxophones, flutes and electronics. Steve is best known as a member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, with whom he has played for twenty years and released over twenty-five recordings. Rova has been called "one of the most daring ensembles of any instrumentation to emerge in recent years" by Downbeat magazine. He has been a member of Composers in Red Sneakers, a Boston composer's collective, and the bands Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet. He has performed with Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, Dave Holland, Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell, John Zorn, Steve Lacy, Mark Dresser, Joan Jeanrenaud, Fred Frith, Tin Hat Trio, Willie "Loco" Alexander, Yo! Miles with Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith, Donald Byrd, Jaki Byard and Ted Nugent as well as many other jazz, rock, dance and theater groups. Steve has appeared on more than fifty recordings, and has five recordings as leader or co-leader on the 9 Winds and Clean Feed labels, the latest of them being Surface Tension. Steve has performed the premieres of numerous classical compositions, including Prisoner of Love by Robert Aldridge, Thomas Oboe Lee's Saxxologie... A Sextet, and Passing Time by Jon Nelson. He performed Edmund Campion?s Corail with the Berkeley Symphony and at the Ojai Music Festival, and was a member of the 25th Anniversary performance of Terry Riley's In C, which was released on New Albion. Steve has written more than fifty compositions for saxophone quartet, as well as many others for varied instrumentations. His piece Cage (for John Cage) was performed at the 1993 Bang on a Can festival, and his piece The Gene Pool was commissioned by Meet the Composer and performed at their festival "The Works" in Minneapolis in 2002. He received a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2000 and a Meet the Composer grant in 1993, and teaches at Mills College. Steve is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Music in Brookline, MA and studied composition with Alan Crossman, Christopher Yavelov and Thomas Oboe Lee, saxophone with David Birkin and Indian music with Peter Row and Steve Gorn.