
This site is home to Alea Publishing & Recording, specializing in music for the bass clarinet.
We offer a growing catalog of creative, artistic transcriptions and new works for bass clarinet solo & ensemble.
About the Music
Composer Anna Vriend's Icebreaker for solo bass clarinet was inspired by "De ijsbreker" in Amsterdam. This was a music centre for contemporary classical music that she was frequenting often as a student and where she often heard bass clarinet pieces being performed by bass clarinet pioneer Harry Sparnaay. This short single-movement work does require an extended-range instrument, but does not feature any modern techniques or use of the altissimo register, so is quite accessible.
Solo score: 1 page, single sheet.
PDF Edition
Purchasing this edition will allow you to download PDF files for the music. If you would prefer to receive a hard-copy, please purchase that edition instead.
About the Composer
Anna Vriend (1961) started playing the recorder at the age of 9 and went on playing the modern flute and later the baroque flute. As a multi-instrumentalist, she has written music for a broad range of instruments including recorders, reed quintet, strings, mandolins, reed-organ, piano and choir.
Her piece “My heart is like a singing bird” for flute and soprano was selected as one of the runners-up for Anima Vox’s call for scores and competition “O Blissful Loss of Self” (USA). It will be performed in Anima Vox’s concert at the University of North Carolina School for the Arts in March 2021 and at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro during the 2021- 2022 academic year.
Anna won the third prize in the VIII International Composition Competition Opus Ignotum (Czech Republic) with “Což ten slavíček”, a work for women’s choir and obligato flute.
Performances of her work include her carol “A child this day is born” by the SRP (Society of Recorder Players) Essex Branch, the Mellow Tones Recorder Orchestra, and St. John’s Singers in Loughton (UK).
She is active in attending masterclasses at the London music colleges. As a choral singer, she has sung in choirs such as the Koor Nieuwe Muziek in Amsterdam, the Schola Cantorum in Florence, the Kammerchor der Kreuzchirche in Bonn. She is a member of the Meljon Singers, and she sings in her local church choir. She is studying composition privately with Alexander Campkin.
Kim Davenport
President
Duo Alea began performing music for bass clarinet and piano in 1996. As both performers searching for new repertoire and teachers working with students eager to develop as performers, it quickly became clear that there was a need for more repertoire featuring the bass clarinet. Filling this need became the mission of Alea Publishing & Recording.
Since our first publication in 1997, the Bach Suites, the Alea catalog now includes over 250 titles. As performing musicians ourselves, we pride ourselves on the accuracy and quality of our sheet music, as well as our ability to ship directly to customers around the world.
We are proud of the diversity of our catalog in terms of the inclusion of works by composers and arrangers from around the world. We are interested in continuing to expand this diversity, representing musical ideas from around the world.
In June 2020, we announced the creation of the Dolphy Prize for new works for bass clarinet by Black composers.
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