excerpt from PBS doc: Symphony for Nature
[click here to watch the full documentary]
in collaboration with Steiger Butte Drum
(Klamath Tribe; Chiloquin, Oregon)
We wanted to create a work of musical art that truly binds the natural environment and topography of Crater Lake with a musical landscape and experience. It’s important to us that this work feel deeply connected to the environment, instead of simply presenting music in a beautiful place.
— Teddy Abrams, conductor
listen to full recording:
Natural History was written in collaboration with Steiger Butte Drum and was inspired by Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. The Britt Festival in Oregon commissioned the work as part of the 100th anniversary of America’s National Park Service.
Natural History premiered the morning of July 29, 2016, on the rim of the lake at a location that Gordon scouted, with musicians spatially situated around the site.
A PBS documentary, Symphony for Nature follows Gordon, musicians, conductor Teddy Abrams, members of the Klamath Tribe and park personnel as they prepare for the premiere and reflect on the importance, beauty and spiritual-qualities of Crater Lake and how the site-specific performance of Gordon’s work combines with their experience of the natural wonder.
This collaboration has brought the vital voices of indigenous peoples into this work for orchestra — elevating the music into an offering to our precious, fragile, natural world. Giiwas (Crater Lake), which means “A Spiritual Place”, is the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribe. Their ancestors lived on this land centuries before there was a crater or a lake. The group’s name, Steiger Butte, originates from a Vision Quest Site west of Chiloquin, Oregon traditionally used by tribal people. The Steiger Butte Drum, which has been in existence since the 1950s, is a Northern-style pow-wow drum, a family group of singers and drummers that travels the Pacific Northwest. For Gordon, collaborating with the members of the Klamath Tribe was a natural result of his experiences at Crater Lake.
Gordon visited the lake in the summer of 2015 and winter of 2016 and spent time with both Park Superintendent Craig Ackerman and Park Historian Stephen Mark. He also conversed with local writer Lee Juillerat who provided him with additional background on the history of the region and native lore and tradition. On his last trip to the park, Gordon spent a week in a ranger’s house in the dead of winter. During that period, he worked with the Klameth tribal drummers, who are the soloists of the piece.
For Gordon, this work is “designed to be an experiential spectacle. The idea is to draw out the natural sounds in and around Crater Lake and connect the natural sonic environment to the orchestra.”
He continues:
In my time at Crater Lake, the thing I was thinking about is the symphony that’s going on all year long: the sounds of the animals, the birds chirping, the wind blowing, even that sound of the expanse of the lake. I was imagining this chorus of the animals, the symphony that’s been going for centuries.
The circumstances of this piece are unique — to be able to collaborate with Steiger Butte Drum to create a piece of music inspired by Crater Lake and to work with such a variety of musical forces: Indigenous musicians, a full symphony and chorus, brass orchestra and percussionists. It’s a pretty overwhelming feeling. It’s thrilling and humbling.
For more information about this work or anything from Michael Gordon’s extensive catalogue, please write us!