Update Title: 19F40AAD-C275-4B90-A788-B877CDB2C70F

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Singing the Blue Ridge is part of a project called Preserving Rural Soundscapes, whose aim was to use Art-Based Civic Dialogue to raise awareness of issues of growth and planning as citizens in Nelson County worked out plans for area development. In addition to composing the piece, I taught classes and led assemblies for schoolchildren, worked with civic groups, and led soundwalks. All of these activities helped people connect more strongly with the soundscapes in which they live and think about the importance of the sounding environment.

Singing the Blue Ridge invites us into the habitat we share with other living creatures--such as deer, frogs, otter, raccoon, wolf, peeper, and toad. New technology has made it possible to bring the calls of animals right into the concert hall. The scoring of Singing the Blue Ridge combines mezzo, baritone, orchestra and electronic playback made from those animal calls. I am indebted to Lang Elliott of Nature Sound Studio (http://www.naturesound.com) and to the Macaulay Natural Sound Library of Cornell University (http://birds.cornell.edu/LNS/) for permission to use many of their excellent field recordings.

Four poems were commissioned specially for this composition from the distinguished Washington-based poet Barbara Goldberg. The first sings of a glorious spring morning celebrated in the wild; the second, of the fate of frogs and people when they collide; the third, of the natural cycle of eat or be eaten; the last, of the havoc wreaked by humans through greed or carelessness, as well as the hope for better stewardship to come.

Singing the Blue Ridge is dedicated to my mother, Dr. Harriet Evelyn Sommer Shatin, from whom I learned the miracles of the natural world and so much else.
--JS

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