The Hollow Reed and the Silver Pipe
Twenty-three concert pieces for flute and oboe, each built on one idea and all drawn from a single scale.
A hollow reed and a silver pipe are two of the oldest ways of turning breath into song. The oboe speaks through a double reed of cane, dark and close to the human voice. The flute speaks through a column of air over the lip of a metal tube, bright and quick as light on water. These pieces put the two side by side and let each one listen to the other.
Every note comes from the octatonic scale, which alternates half steps and whole steps and never settles into a home key. Inside it, each piece follows a single idea to its end: a canon and its shadow, a mirror, a drone passed from breath to breath, birdsong, a toccata, a lament, a spiral, a dance in eleven, two clocks keeping different time, a lullaby for a machine. The last piece, Afterlight, remembers them all.
Written for advanced and professional players, the collection uses piccolo, alto flute and English horn alongside flute and oboe. Its extended techniques are part of the music, not effects laid on top: air tones, whisper tones, key clicks, harmonics, bends, multiphonics, flutter-tonguing and jet whistles.
Inside this edition:
- 23 full scores, each about 8-9 minutes long
- A program note for every piece, free to reproduce in concert programs
- Performance notes for every piece, with a short music example of each extended technique
- Complete parts: Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute, Oboe and English Horn
- Five suggested concert programs of four pieces each
- A QR code linking to recordings and score videos on YouTube
Each piece stands on its own and can be programmed singly, in the suggested sets, or as one complete cycle. It's suited to recitals, degree recitals, new-music concerts, chamber-music study and teaching extended techniques.
About the composer: Innocent Okechukwu is a Nigerian composer whose music has been performed across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, by artists including the JACK Quartet, the Chamber Orchestra of Boston and the Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra. He won first prize in the 2026 Luna Nova Pipe Organ Composition Contest. Three works from his piano collection The Voyage were recorded by Navona Records for the Sphinx Organization and published by Hal Leonard. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at the University of Iowa.
