Far West
ensemble: string quartet
duration: 6 minutes
written: winter 2022
written for: Kuttner Quartet
premiered: May 6, 2022; Bloomington, IN
Note:
“Far, far from everything, throw behind you a comb, a forest will grow”
- Far West, Czeslaw Milosz
I have been a native east coaster for most of my life, having only made it to the other side of this country for the first time a little over three years ago. My first impression of the land was the simultaneous beauty and violence of it all; mountain ranges shooting out of seeming nowhere, the gnarly twisting and tangling of the trees. In making these trips, there is a sense that I am somehow part of the mythical American tradition of “going west” and becoming enraptured in the grandness of it all. I feel as though I am seeing the California landscape through the (sometimes romantic) lenses of John Muir, Walt Whitman, Ansel Adams, Joni Mitchell, and Jack Kerouac.
Far West is a sort of musical mediation on the beauty, stillness, and aesthetics of experiencing the natural wonders of the west.
