Program Notes

Written by composer

For the past few years, I found myself periodically driving across the western US.  And over roughly a decade, I've noticed a striking change.  The number of wind farms has exploded.  There are places, in particular Colorado and Kansas, where the white rubines stretch as far as the eye can see, ahead and on either side.

For me, their scale and grand motion are inspiring.  It comes out of the human instinct to build  on a vast scale positive in the face of our climate and energy struggles.

The piece is a tone poem, in two movements played with pause.  The first, Aerial View, evokes the passage of a series of farms seen from a great enough distance that each one has a distinct character, parsed into the different sting sections.  The second, Surface View, subdivides the strings so as to crate a weaving micropolyphony, as though one is walking amidst the turbines.  And out of the motives that make up this motion, the larger hymn emerges.