Program Notes

Bob Hughes composed numerous film scores with Alaskan and Pacific Northwest themes. He conducted orchestras in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Sitka, Alaska over the course of his career and toured the Arctic with wind ensembles and experimental dance groups. Commissioned by the Public Broadcasting Service, the Alaska Arts Council, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the Walt Disney Company, he composed music that portrayed the rarified atmosphere and natural wonders of the Arctic region, with the inclusion of native folk melodies, songs, and traditional instruments such as the hoop drum with seal bladder membrane, as well as his own additions to the percussion section, such as caribou antlers.

Uutiqtut is an Inuit word meaning movement. It is identified with the annual migration of the caribou. This work stays close to the musical genre of the Chase, offered as a subtitle, as it selects the moment at which the herds movement accelerates to a furious pace when confronted with danger. The opening measures set the atmospherean icy cold early morning in the tundra. Unease disturbs the calm as a herd of caribou senses a predator. Wisps of fleeting sixteenth notes gather gradually into a forceful impetus which develops into the full pursuit of the chase as the arctic wolves make their move. In the end, one animal cries out (a dramatic tour de force for trombone) as it expires in the cold dark Arctic landscape.

Uutiqtut is an offshoot of an experiment written to accompany a climactic scene in the movie Never Cry Wolf (Disney). Ultimately the film and scene took a much different shape and the composer chose to orchestrate the piece for large forces with a particularly elaborate percussion section. Here, Uutiqtut is paired to the atmospheric Ublarpaluk (Dawn) to form an Orchestral Suite that folds the drama of the chase into the overarching wonder of the Arctic light and stillness.

The composer brought Uutiqtut forward for inclusion in his late work, Silenus Antiphonary, where it anchors the Summer section of this major composition based on the seasons.

Uutiqtut and Ublarpaluk were premiered with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under the artistic direction of Kent Nagano on April 25, 1987, with the composer conducting. The Cabrillo Music Festival performed Uutiqtut on August 12, 2023, with Cristian Mcelaru conducting, in a special tribute to Bob Hughes, who in 1963 co-founded the festival with Lou Harrison.