What’s New? Spring 2016

Inaugural Concerts from the Landscape Music Composers Network

Cadillac Moon Ensemble

Cadillac Moon Ensemble. Photo by Karjaka Studios.

Our upcoming event Landscape Music Presents Cadillac Moon Ensemble at the Parrish Art Museum celebrates the National Park Service’s century of conservation with a concert of new music evoking landscape, ecology, wildlife, and adventure.

This concert, which takes place on September 9 in Water Mill, NY, is an exciting collaboration between the Landscape Music Composers Network, the Parrish Art Museum (the Hamptons’ premier fine art museum), and NYC’s fantastic Cadillac Moon Ensemble. We’ll hear music by five Landscape Music composers—Nell Shaw Cohen, Stephen Lias, Justin Ralls, Alex Shapiro, and Stephen Wood—including World Premieres composed by Cohen and Ralls for this occasion.

Check out the press release, purchase tickets, and watch this space for detailed coverage!

Last month saw the first-ever concert affiliated with Landscape Music Composers Network, New Music of Our National Parks, created by Rachel Panitch and presented by the Advent Library Concert Series in Boston, MA. It was an evening of beautiful performances and we were fortunate to attract an appreciative audience, which included members of the National Park Service. In case you missed it, here’s the press release with an overview of the event and a concert preview with samples of each of the pieces that were featured on the program.


Michael Futreal Joins the Composers Network

Michael FutrealWe recently welcomed a new addition to the Landscape Music Composers Network: Michael Futreal, a composer, improvising performer, instrument builder, and multimedia artist based in Shreveport, LA. Recently an Artist-in-Residence at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, Michael creates unique works that “articulate impressions of places as powerful catalysts to imagination and memory.”


Recent Articles on Landscape Music

Intersections: Duets with Nature — The first in Nell Shaw Cohen’s series highlighting large-scale, interdisciplinary, multimedia, and/or collaborative projects at the intersection of music, nature, and environmental advocacy.

Stephen Wood: Wilderness Advocacy Through Music and Education — In this in-depth interview, Stephen Wood shares ideas and experiences behind his concerts and educational programs, elucidating his vision of how music acts as a catalyst for reconnecting us to our environment.

Sketches of Nature: Landscape Music in the Central Asian Steppe — Justin Ralls explores the musical culture of the central Asian steppe and reflects on parallels between the Tuvan approach to “sketches of nature” and western music composition.

Intersections: Duets with Nature

Humpback Whale by Christopher Michel

Humpback Whale by Christopher Michel is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Landscape Music isn’t really a publication for conventional music journalism, but interesting projects frequently come to my attention that are well worth mentioning here. Accordingly, I bring you Intersections: a series of articles highlighting large-scale, interdisciplinary, multimedia, and/or collaborative projects at the intersection of music, nature, and environmental advocacy. These articles will profile groups of diverse projects that share compelling thematic connections.

Each of these projects provide new and illuminating answers to the question of how we can make music about, with, and from natural landscapes (or, as the case may be, seascapes!). And all of the work I’ll be exploring is closely aligned with the ideas behind this website, though these artists are not affiliated with Landscape Music or the Landscape Music Composers Network.

For this first article, I’m focusing on a few unusual projects in which new music is created through a “duet” with sounds from the natural world: POD TUNE, an ambient album featuring whale song; E-Mago, music made with geophysical data; Inuksuit, John Luther Adam’s outdoors epic; and Nat Evans’ The Tortoise, a sonic documentation of the Pacific Crest Trail. Continue reading

Stephen Wood: Wilderness Advocacy Through Music and Education

Photographs from the 2014 Wilderness Act Performance Series at the Outdoor Activity Center in Atlanta, GA. Proximity to Nature by Shawn Taylor and Proximity Viz, LLC. Left to right, middle: Stephen Wood, composer/director; Marti Keller, poet. Bottom: Tim Crump, saxophone; Jessica Sherer, flute; Nick Johns, piano/Corey Denham, percussion; Eric Fontaine, saxophone.

Photographs from the 2014 Wilderness Act Performance Series at the Outdoor Activity Center in Atlanta, GA. Proximity to Nature by Shawn Taylor and Proximity Viz, LLC. Left to right, middle: Stephen Wood, composer/director; Marti Keller, poet. Bottom: Tim Crump, saxophone; Jessica Sherer, flute; Nick Johns, piano/Corey Denham, percussion; Eric Fontaine, saxophone.

Stephen Wood is an Atlanta-based composer, performer, and naturalist who creates classical and jazz music in conversation with wilderness advocacy and environmental education.

Stephen Wood in Nantahala Wilderness Area.

Stephen Wood in Southern Nantahala Wilderness Area.

I asked Stephen, who is a member of the Landscape Music Composers Network, to share some of the ideas and experiences behind his innovative concerts and educational programs, in particular, and to elucidate his vision of how music acts as a catalyst for reconnecting us to our environment.

Stephen writes: “My current work as a composer, educator, and environmentalist is concerned with advocating for our National Preservation System and awakening our human connection to Earth. I do this first by composing music in different genres inspired by these natural themes. Additionally, I participate in and create Artist Residencies for our National Wilderness Preservation System, producing site-specific concerts and “Art Hikes” celebrating human connections to Nature, and presenting my educational workshop “Inspiring Stewardship” in music and science classes.” Continue reading