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A Mountain Symphony is a tribute to the incredible Cascade Mountains that are right here in our back yard. Most of the sketches for the piece were written at Spider Gap, 7995 feet up, in a little tent in a cave overlooking Spider Glacier and the valley below. Many of the sounds I experienced while there found their way into the piece – the cracking of the glacier as it shifted, the cascading water of the nearby waterfall, the wind coming up through the valley, the birds and insects. I was also affected by the way time felt like it moved differently up there – a much larger scale than my daily human scale of movement, rushing around on the surface of the planet. I felt aware of the time that existed before me and will after me, and the vastness of the mountains and the earth.
A note on the context of the writing of this piece: in 2012, as I worked on this piece, my mom was very involved and interested. She would call every day and ask how it was going, listen to parts of it, offer her advice (which was very helpful!). She was invited to the dress rehearsal, but got distracted by a phone call from her sister. The next day, she died suddenly accidentally, and missed the premiere by a few days. This piece is dedicated to my mother, Joan Elizabeth Graham Bassingthwaighte.
