Composer’s Note:

In July 2023 I was at a family reunion in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, in the southern Rockies. The gathering was at a home which was part of a development, partly in nature, and partly in the anonymous American exurban environment. But just outsdie there was a single aspen tree, and I began to watch and listen to it for about an hour. The wind through its leaves created a constantly shifting and overlapping textural/timbral counterpoint that I found hypnotically compellIng. Over time, a model for a piece suggested itself. The recurrent and recombinant waves of sounds, transformed into musical motives and arranged registrally in analogy to the overtone series, became a sonic metaphor for the tree’s song.

Percussion needed: 2 glockenspiels, 2 xylophones, 2 vibraphones, 2 marimbas, 2 suspended cymbals, metal and wind chimes, low gong, rattle, maracas, and tubular bells.