A Forest Unfolding

Novelist Richard Powers presides over a collaborative effort involving four composers, four writers, and an ensemble of instrumentalists and singers. This large-scale commission by EEC will be performed by Tony Arnold, soprano and Alex Hurd, baritone, with pianist Molly Morkoski, violinist Ari Isaacman-Beck, clarinetist Todd Palmer, cellist Robert Burkhart, harpist Stacey Shames, flutist Laura Gilbert, and violist Jonathan Bagg.

A Forest Unfolding is inspired by recent scientific research into the rich communication and subterranean connectivity between trees.  Four writers—the environmentalists Bill McKibben and Joan Maloof, along with the novelists Richard Powers and Kim Stanley Robinson—selected prose passages and poems on the relations among people and trees.  They presented these selections to four composers—Eric Moe, Melinda Wagner, Stephen Jaffe, and David Kirkland Garner—who set these words into a linked sequence of recitatives and arias.  The resulting whole traces a narrative arc from human estrangement from nature to a glimpse of the endless cooperation that knits a forest together.

The program begins with two chamber works:

“And Then I Knew Twas Wind” for flute, viola and harp by Toru Takemitsu

Piano Quartet in A minor by Gustav Mahler

“A Forest Unfolding” is supported by multiple partners. It will be performed a second time at the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Portland ME on August 18. Rehearsals for the EEC premiere are taking place at Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, NH. We are grateful for the support of our partners, Avaloch Farm and PCMF!

This concert is sponsored by Monadnock Paper Mills.

Electric Earth Concerts thanks the following organizations for their ongoing efforts to keep  New Hampshire’s forest communities healthy and sustainable:

Society for the Protection of  New Hampshire Forests
Harris Center
Monadnock Conservancy