*Flute and Bb Clarinet version is transposed up a tritone.
SOUNDING PITCH RANGES OF EACH PART:
TOP LINE (Soprano Saxophone in Bb, Flute, Oboe, or Clarinet in Bb)
B3 to G6
BOTTOM LINE (Alto Saxophone in Eb or Clarinet in Bb)
Db3 to D6
Db3 appears only twice in this composition, in mm. 1 & 95. In all versions where the bottom line is played by Clarinet in Bb, these notes have been moved up one octave to accommodate its available range.
**The pitch ranges of the Flute and Clarinet in Bb version are a tritone higher.
Duration: 8 minutes or 3 minutes and 15 seconds
The world premiere of the 3’15” version for Soprano Saxophone and Alto Saxophone, performed by Chien-Kwan Lin and Anne Kunkle, took place at the Eastman School of Music in Kilbourn Hall as part of the event entitled Celebrating Dean Jamal Rossi, in Rochester, NY, on May 3, 2024.
Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Jamal J. Rossi.
The world premiere of the 3’15” version for Clarinet and Alto Saxophone, performed by Katie Jimoh and Julian Velasco, took place at the University of Chicago as part of the opening ceremony of the exhibition entitled Jessica Stockholder: For Events, in Chicago, IL, on April 1, 2024.
Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Jessica Stockholder.
The world premiere of the 3’15” version for Oboe and Clarinet, performed by Hsuan-Fong Chen and Yasmina Spiegelberg, took place at Genesis House, in the LED-wrapped stage of the Cellar, as part of the Chelsea Music Festival's "Connecting the Dots — 15th Season Opening Night", in New York, NY, on June 21, 2024.
Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Melinda Lee Masur, Ken-David Masur, and the Chelsea Music Festival.
The world premiere of the 3’15” version for Flute and Clarinet, performed by Barry Crawford and Benjamin Fingland, took place at the at Avaloch Farm Music Institute as part of the Composers Conference 80th Anniversary Gala Celebration, in Boscawen, NH, on August 4, 2024.
Special thanks to Kurt Rohde, Vimbayi Kaziboni, and Jessica Tong.
Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to the Composers Conference in its 80th Anniversary Year.
The first audio and video recording of the 8’ version for Soprano Saxophone and Alto Saxophone, performed by Philip Pierick and Taimur Sullivan, was recorded and filmed in the Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago, IL, on December 11, 2025.
Reference audio recording is available for private listening. If you would like to review the recording please Contact Augusta Read Thomas.
World premiere of the 3’15” version performed by Chien-Kwan Lin and Anne Kunkle in Kilbourn Hall Eastman School of Music as part of the event titled, Celebrating Dean Jamal Rossi, in Rochester, NY, on May 3, 2024.
Virtuosi artists, Phil Pierick and Taimur Sullivan, right after their nuanced, sparkling, and musical private-recording-session of the 8-minute version of BEBOP RIDDLE V. December 11, 2025, Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago, IL.
Bebop Riddle V is part of a series of “Bebop Riddles” Thomas has been composing, all of which are independent, unique works. Others in this series include Bebop Riddle I, for solo marimba; Bebop Riddle II, for pizzicato cello and piano, and its transformation into Bebop Riddle II B, for bassoon and piano; and Bebop Riddle IV, for reed quintet (with transcriptions for various wind quintet combinations).
Thomas’ works always spark and catch fire from spontaneous improvisations. It is music always in the act of becoming. She has a vivid sense that the process, rather than a predictable fixed point of arrival, is the essence of the creative journey.
Thomas sings and dances when she composes, and likes her music to be organic and self-propelled in both process and experience — as if listeners are overhearing or capturing a spontaneously embodied improvisation. She has said, “For me, music and dance must be alive; they have to jump off the page and out of the instrument and body as if something big is at stake.”
Bebop Riddle V is by turns sprightly, spry, energetic, and spirited. In this work, Thomas crafted animated, traveling, flexible, versatile, changing, fluid, and buoyant sonic adventures, a bit like two hummingbirds darting around a field of wildflowers.
Iridescent, bold, and scintillating, the carefully sculpted and fashioned musical materials of Bebop Riddle V are agile and vivacious, and their flexibility allows pathways to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed — variously whimsical, jazzy and bebop-like, layered, and reverberating, with lyrical resonance, pirouettes, fulcrum points, and vitality.
The two equally virtuosic parts — requiring highly characterized dynamics and articulations, as well as fast fingering changes — sparkle forth for 8 minutes, unfolding fourteen continuously developing phrases, each lasting between 15 and 50 seconds. The music is organic and concerned with transformations and connections at every level. Poetically speaking, this composition has a kind of fractal quality to it — each part has a similar flair, twirl, whirl, pivot, and character as the whole.
The two brown lines (in the center and slightly to the right) with the black squiggles coming out of them represent the 2 instruments. The black squiggles represent the bebop notes/riddles.
To obtain examination or performance material for this
Augusta Read Thomas work, please contact Nimbus Music Publishing.
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