Mark Morris and I became friends through our mutual love for the music and the person of the marvelous Lou Harrison. I think Lou would be delighted that Mark has made new dance to my music. And I know that I am.

Among the most personal music I’ve ever composed, Vespers of the Blessed Earth is both a lamentation and a celebration — an expression of my personal grief over the loss of someone I loved dearly, and over the violence that we humans inflict on one another and on other forms of life. At the same time, Vespers is an expression of my faith in the enduring beauty and the cycles of renewal on this earth.

When I was twenty and studying composition in California, I composed a little percussion piece in which the rhythms seemed to be constantly getting faster, yet never quite arriving.

Two years later I found my way to Alaska, and from the moment I arrived I knew that I’d come home. In Alaska, through my experiences in wild country and my friendships with extraordinary people like the poet John Haines and the conductor Gordon Wright, I discovered the full dimensions of my life’s work. 

More than an environmental documentary, Ice Breath (directed by Leonard Alecu) and Become Ocean is an experimental fusion exploring the vast, inscrutable meanings of climate change.