A doina is a highly ornamented improvised solo found in Romanian music. This form was adopted by klezmer musicians. Just as klezmer musicians in Eastern Europe occupied liminal, between-spaces in society, with both unstable identities and lifestyles, so too does the musical material in this piece represent a sort of liminality. The techniques in the clarinetist’s tablature resemble the sorts of ornaments we might find in klezmer music, like a krechts. But where these ornaments would normally speed by, here, they are stretched in time, amplified, and all of their noisiness and unpredictable, unstable timbres are brought to the fore.

“Doina” was recorded by Katherine Schoepflin Jimoh of Ensemble Dal Niente in 2020.