Composer’s Note:

Coyote Dreams was originally composed for Marimba and three percussionists in Santa Fe, New Mexico in the summer of 1997 while I was performing, as I have done every summer since 1968, with the Santa Fe Opera. I would arrive home from performances, often after midnight, and in the late-night quiet surroundings nestled at the based of the Sangre de Christo mountains, I often heard the shrieks, yeps and cries of the coyotes running in the dried riverbeds in this most beautiful and enchanted landscape. Indeed, New Mexico is known as “The Land of Enchantment”. The coyote is an animal somewhat like a fox. In Native American Culture, it is believed that Coyote, a trickster, possessing mystical powers who can transform himself into different beings. Many folk tales have been handed down through generations amongst the Pueblo Indians of the Southwestern United States. This work goes through a series of musical transformations. Keeping with the concept of “Coyote the Trickster”, I composed a metric scheme which causes irregular displacement of the natural flow of the melody and harmony creating a kind of Stravinsky-like angularity, elevating the focus of the members within the performing ensemble.