Composed: 2022
Premiered: 2022, Hamilton
Duration: 13 minutes

fire break is my song for the forests burned by the climate crisis – fires amplified by a heating planet and by over a hundred years of colonial suppression of Indigenous cultural burning. fire break was inspired by a creative residency at LTER or Long Term Ecological Residency in Andrews Forest, a 200-year-long program for scientists and artists. 

In the barren landscape of a gigantic reservoir in Oregon, silvery stumps of a dead cedar forest dot the red earth slopes. While I hold a contact microphone to the wood, my friend Darion draws a dusty stick back and forth like a bow across a spindly root. Through my headphones the voice of this long dead tree starts to sing: raucous moans and shudders, like an unhinged saxophone solo. 

Over the following weeks, other trees speak to me: booming thuds as I “woodpecker” a fallen old-growth Douglas fir; cascading dry twigs snap and tumble; marimba notes ring as I strike the limbs of an ancient cedar in a lava field; my fingernails scrape hollow whispers from the charred trunk of a burnt lodgepole pine. Since the summer, I keep thinking about those trees — their rich and complicated lives; their deaths from flooding, old age and fire; and the howl of those spruce roots. 

Traditional fire techniques increase biodiversity and reduce wildfire risk, strengthening the land for all species. Models such as the Indigenous-led Western Klamath Restoration Partnership (WKRP) in California build trust and a shared vision for restoring fire resilience on the land. In northern Australia, cultural burning on Aboriginal lands have halved destructive wildfires and reduced greenhouse-gas emissions from wildfires by 40 per cent. 

Program note by the composer.