Solo/Duo

Giancore! (2016)

Violin and Piano

Written for Giancarlo Latta (violin) and Wesley Ducote (piano)

Giancore! (2016) was commissioned by violinist Giancarlo Latta and pianist Wesley Ducote as a part of their project 16×16: The Rice Encore Project in which 16 composers from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music were asked to write show pieces for violin and piano. The work is based off of my own improvisations on the violin, a practice that would guide many subsequent works and that still contributes to my compositional process today.

-Tommy Dougherty, 2021

Kireji (2014)

Violin Duo

Written for Ling Ling Huang and Dorothy Ro

Kireji in traditional haiku poetry is the “cutting word” which juxtaposes two images or ideas (in this instance, friendship and people) and signals a moment of separation, influencing how the elements are related. When placed at the end of a verse, it provides a dignified ending, concluding the verse with a heightened sense of closure. Used in the middle of a verse, it briefly cuts the stream of thought, indicating that the verse consists of two thoughts half independent of each other. Kireji as a title not only alludes to haiku as a skeleton for the work, but is the essence of all traditional haiku.

It is a title meant to reflect the piece and the performers as well as the occasion of the commission. This piece was commissioned for the “moment of the separation” of Dorothy and I after 8 years school and 3 years of friendship and a quartet together. We hope this last performance together will provide a “dignified ending, concluding with a heightened sense of closure” to our working relationship, but we know this time is also the middle of our friendship “verse”, briefly cutting us with distance and that we remain a single idea (or friendship) still connected and consisting of two people half independent of each other.

-Ling Ling Huang