THE LOONS OF LAC LA CROIX (2021)

orchestra
3333/4331/timp/3perc/hp/strings
duration 5:30

The Calling of the Loons: "The loons of Lac la Croix are part of the vast solitudes, the hundreds of rocky islands, the long reaches of the lake...my memory is full of their calling...Once years ago on the open reaches of Lac la Croix I heard them under the light of a spring moon, a wild, blending harmony that has haunted me ever since...

Pictographs: "...The great surfaces of Running Rock [Warrior Hill] were alive with movement. glittering with thousands of rivulets that spread fanlike over the granite slopes, caught the light, and lost it when they ran over the mosses and lichens and into the crevices....we paddled to the cliff and sat there studying the paintings: the imprints of hands, the moose, the war canoes, the suns and moons...."

Running Rock: "...In the old days [the] young...started at the water's edge, raced clear to the top a thousand yards or more away...and ran back to their canoes."

Quotations from The Singing Wilderness, © 1956 Sigurd F. Olson. Used by permission of the Sigurd F. Olson family.

PERFORMANCES

premiere: St Olaf Orchestra, October 9 2021