ensemble: four flutes (two C flutes, two G alto flutes)
duration: 8 minutes
written: spring-summer 2023
written for: Erica Spear

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Sequoia is the second in what has become a set of pieces about the American West; its landscape, mythology, and history. The initial impulse behind this piece came from Richard Powers’ 2018 novel The Overstory, in which Powers movingly personifies the life of trees. Using recent discoveries in the natural sciences, Powers writes about how trees, using complex root systems, communicate and protect one another. This natural communication method, as well as the concept of seeing a great forest as both something that is individual yet densely connected, inspired the musical material in Sequoia. The piece is made up of a series of breathy, intertwined, seemingly endless melodic lines that ever so gradually morph over time.