Always something moves (2024)

Program Note

       Each movement of Always something moves is based on a phrase from Nan Shepherd’s memoir The Living Mountain. Shepherd was a hillwalker who spent her life wandering the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. The title of the piece is taken from Shepherd’s observation that in nature, there’s no such thing as true silence; “always something moves.”

the stags were the yodelers imitates the bellowing of Scottish red deer.

the antiquity of a living flower marvels at the delicate persistence of arctic flowers that survive brutal weather conditions year after year.

moths like oiled paper and moths like burnt paper explores the strange and beautiful ways that moths flutter through moonlight.

precipice after precipice glowing to rose and fading again depicts the gradual illumination of mountain peaks during a sunrise.