MUIRPIPES 10 (Wild Flowers)
MUIRPIPES is a new project in which I create bagpipe improvisations in response to the lands that John Muir’s feet walked and words touched. The music of MUIRPIPES is inspired by the fervor and ecstasy within the writings of the Scots-American naturalist and Father of US National Parks, not to mention the breathtaking beauty of nature. The difficulty of the pipes reflect the arduous trails of Muir and bring attention to the fleetingly delicate tableaux of our diminishing natural world.
Pipes are THE iconic outdoor instrument, often depicted sounding from mountain top, reverberating across a landscape. Nothing better captures the raw and open antiquity of nature’s architecture than the sound and musical possibilities of the bagpipes. The bagpipe best captures the wild passion of this Scots outdoorsman!
The emotional impact of the instrument’s sound parallels the ecstatic revelation of immersion in the awe, splendor and wonder of nature. The bagpipe’s resonance and new music discoveries within these (natural) structures aims to connect an audience to the uniqueness of various lands and their conservation needs.
The site-specific nature of the project is designed to elicit a a musical dialogue with the environment, further illustrating landscapes as a moment in time worth documenting.
Too loud for nature?? The solo bagpipe is far from the volume of an amplified instrument. At most, it sounds as a quartet of reeds, made from organic substances. Through its natural tuning and resonances, its sound floats across open spaces like a down feather 🪶 in the breeze. When playing their broken-down components, the pipes are quite capable of quiet and delicate expressions.
The one-of-a-kind musical responses are intended to be concise and spontaneous reactions to primarily the geological formations and surrounding flora, with minimal disturbance to fauna and fans of the parks.
NPS Family Tradition! I am a Father of a 20-badge Junior Ranger, who is a budding piper, paleontologist and naturalist. I am son of a Golden Ranger, my Mother, another naturalist and birder, who is spending her Golden Years in search of America’s Golden Sunsets.
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