The Pilgrimage of Fire and Earth (2003-4) 11' for large wind ensemble

This piece was premiered by the Michigan Symphony Band at Hill Auditorium, April 15, 2005.

Composing this piece, I had visions of a surrealistic caravan traversing the silk road, enacting some kind of procession with flags and shawms and gongs, a hallucinatory ritual in the desert: a pilgrimage across endless dry earth with chanting, dance, fire. And the destination of the pilgrimage is not clear - maybe it isn't even real - but nonetheless the people are moving, dancing, praying... And as the ritual builds, the pilgrimage moves forward, and the people become ecstatic, go into trance, experience mystical unity. This is not a quiet mysticism - Gnosis, I think, must be gigantic, all-encompassing, deafening - and it is not a calm one either: it moves, breathes, spins.

There is also later a meditative space, a space for reflection, for understanding... maybe it’s at night in the tents, or maybe it’s somewhere else entirely, somewhere transfigured, somewhere far from the dust and fire of the silk road. I have always felt that this piece had a certain impersonal quality. This is perhaps why it is less melodically conceived than much of my recent music. I think that it feels impersonal because the Gnosis to which it aspires to connect is bigger than any individual - because in that Awareness, there is no sense of self.

I tried to approach the wind ensemble as a blank slate, just as this enormous, crazy, wonderful collection of instruments that are each capable of such an amazingly wide variety of sounds. I’ve let all kinds of musics seep in to this piece, some of which are easily identifiable (Tibetan monastic music, Balinese gamelan, breakbeat), and some of which are not so easily identifiable, even by me. But the piece isn’t really about looking at those musics in a new light, or even recognizing them as they pass. Rather, it is about the different ritualistic qualities inherent in each of them, and the way that these qualities can hybridize, feed each other, and melt themselves into something actually quite different: a pilgrimage music for a journey of consciousness.

This piece is scored for 6 flutes, 3 oboes, Enlish horn, Eb clarinet, 6 Bb clarinets, 2 bass clarinets, contrabass clarinet, soprano sax, baritone sax, 2 bassoons, contrabasson, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 4 trombones, 2 bass trombones, 2 euphoniums, 4 tubas, 6 percussion