My earliest musical awakening was as a drummer. From rock bands to playing timpani in a symphony orchestra, my deepest physical connections to music have been through percussion. Over the past five decades my life’s work has led me to compose music for orchestra, string quartet, human voices, piano, electronics, and a wide variety of other media. Now, in my 70s, I’ve returned to the place where I began.

Prophecies of Fire is a perpetual acceleration canon — unbroken streams of rhythm inexorably rising in pitch and growing brighter, always seeming to get faster while never quite arriving. The musicians surround the listeners, enveloping them in a maelstrom of tones and timbres, dynamics and velocities — like the wildfires and superstorms, the turbulent seas and waves of heat now rising all around the earth. But beyond any metaphorical associations, Prophecies of Fire is a celebration of the elemental power of sound itself to touch, to move, and perhaps even to transform human consciousness.

At this stage in my life, I feel a special responsibility and joy in working with the next generations of musicians. Some years ago I had the pleasure of hearing Sandbox Percussion perform my extended cycle for percussion quartet Strange and Sacred Noise. Since then, these extraordinary musicians have performed songbirdsongs, …and bells remembered…, and Inuksuit. I’ve come to regard these four young men as the foremost interpreters of my music for percussion quartet. And I welcomed the invitation to compose Prophecies of Fire specifically for them.

In November, Cold Blue Music will release the premiere recording of Prophecies of Fire, performed by Sandbox Percussion.

And to celebrate the new recording, on Sunday, November 22, Sandbox will present the New York premiere of Prophecies. I hope you’ll be able to hear one or both.

Remembering Wendell Berry
 
Wendell Berry (1934–2026) was a quiet clear voice of sanity and generosity in unsettled times.

I met him only once, introduced by John Haines and Barry Lopez at a literary gathering at the Smithsonian, in what now seems like another world. He was very tall. I was too intimidated to say much to him.

After leaving CalArts, I’d lived for a couple of years on a farm in Georgia, and I’d pretty much wanted to be Wendell Berry. But then I went to Alaska…

And now, more than fifty years later here I am in the great red heart of Australia, still doing my best (with a bow to Wendell) to walk the talk.

How to Be a Composer

(to remind myself)
with apologies to Wendell Berry

i.

Get as far away as you can.
Stay there.
Be still.
Listen.

Learn the songs of the birds of that place.
Learn to recognize the voice of the wind
through each different tree.

Walk.
Receive the music of the ground
beneath your feet.

ii.

Forget everything you think you know.
Mistrust ideas.
Do one thing at a time.
Wait.

Resist writing notes for as long as you can.
Rediscover pencil and paper.
Use only those tools that do
what the music wants,
not what the tools want it to do.

Never forget that music is sound,
rising from and returning to silence. 

iii.

Remember that this is not about you.

Forget being known.
Forget reaching an audience.
Think only of the solitary listener,
that person you may never know,
the one who is listening.

Forget yourself.
Music is your prayer.
The music always knows more than you do.
Become the music.