Solo Piano, Cello, Clarinet, Oboe d'amore, Bassoon, and Strings.

Aspen: from the old English 'aespe' or 'aepse' for shaking poplar tree, with flexible leaf stalks that flutter, even in a light breeze.

Underworld: the supernatural sphere as expressed in religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living.

A colony of aspen trees are interconnected through their root system so that when one of their community is in need of water, minerals, or other nutrients, other aspen trees up to ten meters away work to pass these through their root system to the tree in need.

In some traditions, a crown made from aspen leaves gives its wearer the power to visit and return safely from the Underworld.

In this work I consider the aspen metaphorically and as part of our world where the spirit and body exist in harmony together.

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Know This Place Be True

Know this place,

The touch of deer still silent eye upon the nape of neck,

The unseen scent of fox rust-red and quick to ground,

The softened littered leaf and gentle mossened brown,

With pad walk certain slow upon this bed of dewy earth,

With lonesome peal of bird through rush of mammoth oak,

Through ash that rises far to cloud,

Through cloak of beech and pillared pine,

To river sky look on,

Dark green the leaves of night fall full as owl call close,

As light once more with flaxen blush to east begins,

The day's reluctant rush,

Become, between,

The rise of breath my wonderment and natured kin.

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Two notes begin this piece, the higher returns furtively throughout its duration. Strings lay their quiet bed as the night moves across the sky. The music is shaped by flowing melodic lines that emerge from the play of piano and cello. Like the natural world, this piece is an evolving journey rather than a return to frequent and familiar patterns of sound. The clarinet blossoms from the gentle conversation of piano hammer and cello bow like the branches of a tree that broadens with each breath and bar. Other instruments arrive as if the creatures and life of night that live upon and that surround a tree under the faint light of stars. The piano's restless movement continues throughout the piece until it is eventually calmed by the cello as sleep takes hold and the tree returns to its quiet place of dream and belonging.

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As I gaze at the visual element of this work I think of aspen leaves caught in a moment of their fluttering in the shallow breeze. I started with a photograph of a group of aspen trees that I looked up at on a walk near my home in late autumn as their shimmering golds and yellows met the dark blue sky. In my early drafts I developed a carpet of leaves and abstracted branches to form a rich and complex fabric that reminded me of nature's beauty. This was eventually shaped into an interlocking symmetrical design.

As time when on I created a more representational abstract artwork that for me, more honestly represents the beauty of natural forms.

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