Always Welcome; Never Invited

Written for Jessie Nucho and commissioned by Ninth Planet, Always Welcome; Never Invited is an eight-minute piece for solo flute with a fixed-media layer.

The flute is asked to be two instruments at once. Above the staff float whistle tones and harmonics, fragile and slightly out of reach; below them run key clicks and air sounds in pairs, a mechanical under-voice that keeps the time. Between these two layers the piece builds its vocabulary — tongue rams on the low B, a groove of tongue pizzicato, jet whistles that rise and refuse to land, tremolos that cluster and disperse. Over all of it, again and again, a lullaby line drawn freehand in the score: a tune that is always welcome and never quite allowed in.

The title is the emotional situation of the piece — being the guest who is told the door is open and who can feel, every time, that it is not. Ninth Planet gave the premiere on February 2, 2025 at Wu Performance Hall, UC Berkeley.