The International Clarinet Association (ICA) selected Jenni Brandon as their Composer of the Month for May 2021. As a new feature, every month ICA will be presenting a new “composer of the month,” featuring a living composer with a significant body of work for the clarinet. The featured composition of Jenni’s works is her composition: “Starry Night for solo B-flat Clarinet”.

“Starry Night” is a three-movement work for solo B-flat clarinet that tells of the night skies and the fascination with what lies in them. Jenni said “I used text and poetry as inspiration for each of the movements that relate to the stars and the skies, including poetry and texts from Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, and Van Gogh (whose painting is also the inspiration for the title of this work)”.

This work was written for Los Angeles clarinetist Virginia Costa Figueiredo and was premiered by her in February 2013 in Los Angeles. She recorded it in 2014 and it appears on her CD “Seule”. You can read the poetry that inspired it here.

Jenni stated, “I have quite a few pieces that feature the clarinet. I love exploring the colors of the clarinet, and I’ve been fortunate to get to write works for some truly wonderful performers. Below are my solo and duo works for clarinet, with links to more information”:

SOLO

Chansons de la Nature pour la Clarinette for solo B-flat clarinet: 7-movement work inspired by Aesop’s Fables

Stardust for solo E-flat Clarinet: 3 movements exploring the great American songbook writers of the 20th century

Starry Night for solo B-flat Clarinet

Pleistocene Epoch: The Great Ice Age for solo Bass Clarinet: tells the story of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and some of the extinct animals found in the tar that roamed the area over 10,000 years ago.

DUO

Cumulonimbus: The King of Clouds for B-flat Clarinet and Piano: Telling the story of the massive Cumulonimbus cloud and a coming storm.

Shades of Violet for B-flat Clarinet and Viola: The story and history of the color violet

Multitudinous Stars and Spring Waters for B-flat clarinet and Soprano: Originally for Oboe and Soprano, this work uses translated Chinese poems from women poets to tell a story of love, death, life, and what we hold close to our hearts.

I also have a number of larger chamber works that include clarinet, which you can find under the “chamber music” section of my website: Chamber Music Archives – Jenni Brandon.