WHY THE TREES WERE MURMURING
Commissioned by Brenda and Steven Schick (2020)
Written for the La Jolla Symphony
dedicated to and Inspired by
all the exceptional encounters
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some words about the piece:
Why the trees were murmuring is an appreciation of diversity and community.
In writing this piece, I was moved to explore these themes from various perspectives. Performers are positioned around the concert hall and sounds are embracing the audience. A unique collection of diverse materials and practices has come together and formed a hybrid assemblage in which different kinds of musical practices such as - improvisation, vocalization, and spatialization have joined the orchestra and created a multi-diverse community.
The composition of the musical material is also influenced and shaped based on the qualities of a diversified community. Aside from having an improviser soloist on the stage, the spatialized ensemble surrounding the audience, and the extensive exploration of instrumental colors, every group of instruments functions additionally as soloists in one or more parts of the piece. At the same time that everything is precisely notated, there is always a level of freedom in every section, which allows the realization of the piece to be a co-joint act.
Why the trees were murmuring reveals a journey of the colorful pallet of instrumental sounds hybridized with the whisperings of the fragmented texts. These snippets of texts are selected from Braiding Sweetgrass, written by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and poems by the iconoclast Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad.
The piece unfolds into an improvised coda by the orchestra, amidst the bird calls, various bells, the traces of hope, light, and love from the orchestra and the solo trombone and ultimately the orchestra whispering … “I will greet the sun again” …
Symphonic orchestra
Trombone (4)
for orchestra
Pages - 76
