Wild Fruits. In 1982, I moved to London, UK, to pursue advanced study in composition at the Royal Academy of Music. I came across a book at a stall that would resonate deeply with me: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. This is a journal of a year-long cycle of living in nature; her ability to articulate, among other reflections, the awe-full-ness of the natural world strongly connected with the environmental wellspring of my own creative expression. In 2001, I came across the final manuscript of Henry David Thoreau, recently discovered and published for the first time. Wild Fruits is a journal of observations of the natural environment Thoreau lived in, organized as a series of dated entries on the wild fruits (and other edibles, including nuts and roots) he observed in his daily perambulations. The entries were added over several years, somewhat haphazardly, but organized into chapters that each focus on a particular fruit. The writing is quirky, sometimes digressive, but mostly factual, based on acute readings of evolving conditions as he found them. This publication is highly representative of Thoreau’s identity as a North American writer, strongly rooted in the natural world surrounding him. It occurred to me that with soundscape recordings to evoke the vivid and detailed images of nature that both writers conjure, I could find a way to draw upon both Dillard’s and Thoreau’s texts within the context of musical composition. In 2002, with the support of a Composer Fellowship grant from the McKnight Foundation in Minnesota (where I was teaching at the time), I was able to outfit myself with portable recording equipment and embark on a parallel process to that of Dillard and Thoreau, making recorded “observations” of sounds in nature as I found them in various places I visited. These recordings ranged from the pre-dawn mating calls of Prairie Chickens to waves lapping the pebbled shore of a wilderness lake to the creaking of an old tree in a windstorm. The creative work I embarked upon was to set spoken fragments of text drawn from these two authors into composed soundscapes sculpted from the audio recordings I gathered. I chose to produce multi-channel works, in order to better immerse the listener in the audio environments. As well, the layers of complex textures are more clearly streamed for auditory perception when they are separated in space.

Wild Fruits: Prologue (2004) incorporates spoken excerpts from both Thoreau and Dillard (recorded by Jim Bartruff and Theresa Carson), and one of the underlying sonic layers includes a Thoreau text fragment granulated and stretched to last 16 minutes, the duration of the work, using granular synthesis. This sonority provides a somewhat stable “centre” to the textures that are otherwise full of wind sounds and birds (primarily Prairie Chickens and Wild Turkeys, recorded near Buffalo River State Park in Minnesota). There are several layers of processed wind sounds that sometimes overlap and sometimes succeed other sounds, to create an evolving texture overall. The bird sounds are discrete and appear intermittently.

Wild Fruits 2: Like a ragged flock, like pulverized jade (2006) actually uses no recognizable spoken text from Thoreau or Dillard. There is, as in the Prologue, an underlying layer of Thoreau, granulated and stretched. The title incorporates two fragments from Dillard. The piece divides itself roughly into two parts, the first being built mainly from layers of processed water sounds (running water from creeks, primarily), the second featuring the birds. The texture is rich, but somewhat static, to provide “room” for an optional live performer (amplified alto flute) to situate herself within the soundscape as it unfolds.

Wild Fruits 3: Chestnut (2008) is based much more extensively on recorded text, drawn primarily from Thoreau. The soundscape materials, again mixed to eight-channel presentation, incorporate more discrete sounds, including footsteps, evoking Thoreau’s walks through the countryside around his home.