In celebration of Earth Day 2024 on April 22nd, we are offering an early opportunity to pre-order our upcoming release with True Concord Voices & Orchestra featuring Jake Runestad’s “Earth Symphony”. Earth Symphony is part of their album with director Eric Holtan and pianist Jeffrey Biegel, A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad, which will be released on FRESH! From Reference Recordings this July. As part of the Earth Day celebrations, you can hear a preview of the recording on KHFM Radio on April 17, 19, and 28.
Earth Symphony
Over hundreds of years, composers developed the symphonic form into a potent, large-scale framework for exploring profound ideas. The sheer number of musicians involved and duration of the work allow time, space, and sonic possibilities for a significant musical journey. For this commission from True Concord Voices & Orchestra, I knew that creating a large work for these forces would necessitate a significant story to tell — one of relevance and power, drawn from beautiful and complex human experiences. Every day we hear of fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, tsunamis, extinctions, and diseases that impact life around the globe. The earth is changing, due to human behavior, and how we respond to these changes will determine the survival of our species.
Through brainstorming with my frequent collaborator, poet/librettist Todd Boss, we decided that giving voice to Mother Earth would be a powerful approach. Todd created a sweeping, gorgeous, compelling five-part monologue of a mother telling the history of her children — how they admired her, harmed her, and ultimately, how she recovered.
Her story begins in a pre-life genesis that tracks the evolution of humans, whose apprehension of Earth’s laws endear them to her as nothing short of miraculous (her beloved “Mirabilia”). Movement 1: “Evolution” hints at the musical themes of each subsequent section and establishes a sonic relationship between Earth (D Major) and humankind (E♭ Major), which is explored throughout the work. Movement 2: “Ambition” dramatizes humanity’s fall from grace by retelling the Greek myth of Icarus recalling ancient instruments and melodies (including the Seikilos Epitaph — the oldest, complete musical composition yet discovered). Movement 3: “Destruction” rages through a series of ecological cataclysms — forest fires, storms, earthquakes — illustrated by growling brass, raging percussion, and shrieking woodwinds. Movement 4: “Lament” expresses Earth’s grief in a loving farewell to humanity that echoes Henry Purcell’s 17th-century aria, “When I Am Laid in Earth” (Dido’s Lament), and its iconic descending bass-line chaconne. Movement 5: “Recovery” finds Earth restoring balance and moving on, into a deep spacetime like the one from which she emerged. By anthropomorphizing Earth herself, drawing on the familiar earth-mother trope, “Earth Symphony” enables entry into our own ecological shame, guilt, responsibility, potential, and redemption, all from a wide-angled, time-telescoped lens, thereby asking our most immediately pressing environmental questions in an entirely new way.
