Land of Living Skies

Land of Living Skies (pdf score) (parts available on request)

Back on May 20th the wonderful Regina Mandolin Orchestra (Saskatchewan) gave their first performance of a piece they commissioned from me last November at the Classical Mandolin Society of America's annual convention in Santa Rosa, CA. The RMO is celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2019 and I was honored to be chosen to write them a celebratory piece.

Saskatchewan is known as the Land of Living Skies and I was asked to use that as a title. It was understood that I would not be attempting to paint pictures in sound (not my strong suite) but the title was inspirational anyway. I especially had fun writing for this ensemble because they regularly include some violins and flutes along with the standard plucked string orchestra instrumentation. They also often perform with a fine percussionist.

I've never actually written a notated part for percussion before so I told the RMO Music Director, Natalia Osypenko, that she should feel free to arrange whatever percussion might work with the piece. I take no credit for the cool stuff that is going on in the percussion section.

While not trying to paint the living skies I did find myself being reminded of a couple of my favorite musicians, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, as the piece unfolded. Both Joni and Neil spent significant time in their youth on the Canadian prairie, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, respectively. There is one section in the piece where I intended to invoke a bit of Neil's work with Buffalo Springfield and there are a couple of places that remind me of Joni's early songs as well. Pale imitations at best but they still work well in the piece.

I truly enjoyed writing this piece and working with Natalia and the great folks in Regina. I'm so pleased that they seem to enjoy the music and they intend to perform it a few more times during their anniversary year. Hopefully you will enjoy it too!