Instrumentation: orchestra
(1+picc.2.2.2/4.3.3.1/timp.3 perc/pno/str)

Duration: 10’

Program notes

A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.

The pine she leans against says: Listen. There’s something you need to hear.

-The Overstory, Richard Powers

This music tracks my own emotional journey growing up in and near the rainforests of the pacific northwest, exploring and learning about the natural and human history of my bioregion: what was, what is, what could be, and who we are. In this music is the awe that comes over you when standing amidst the scale and apparent stillness of an ancient rainforest (especially the northern California Coast Redwood forests); the deep joy and gratefulness for life and the natural world that that forest reminds me to experience; the forces that devastated these magnificent forests and ecosystems, the forces that threaten to overcome us all: shortsightedness and greed; and the challenge—to be better stewards of our only world, to be kinder to one another, to learn from and empower indigenous peoples who have more reciprocal relationships with the creatures we share this place with and who managed and maintained it sustainably before us, to be worthy of the gifts the world freely gives as long as we don’t take too much: life, food, shelter, medicine.