Composed 2023; 4:30 minutes

Gabriella Smith’s Cactus-Yucca Scrub (2023) grows out of the California composer’s deep engagement with fragile natural environments. The piece forms part of her five-movement suite Desert Ecology, commissioned for the strings of Delirium Musicum, with desert field recordings. This in turn is one section of a three-composer larger triptych titled Treelogy, each dedicated to one of the signature California tree species imperiled by recent wildfires. Cactus-Yucca Scrub takes us to Joshua Tree National Park, where Smith recorded the sounds of plucked barrel cacti and other sounds of nature, evoking the stark beauty and restless life of desert terrain where cactus and yucca thrive in harsh conditions.