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 2 February 2025 at Wu Performance Hall, UC Berkeley.