Update Title: 2526D2DE-77B2-40EB-B782-02EB89958711

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Blue Earth, commissioned by the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, is in five movements played without pause (except for a few moments of silence after the lament of movement IV) and lasts about thirty minutes. The overall structure is fast-slow-fast-slow-moderate, with movements clearly identified through change of tempo, material and texture. The title of the piece as a whole, as well as its individual movements, provides (optional) extra-musical significance. I was thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy, and I realized that we don't have to terraform Earth to make it the blue jewel in space that it is. The fourth movement, "Lament: The Blue Earth," for example, sings a lament about the current situation in which we seem to be hard at work reverse-terraforming the planet into a used-up wasteland. The other movement titles also reflect this 'blue earth' theme in one way or another: I. "Homing" (as in the ability of birds, among others, to migrate across vast expanses of open ocean); II. "The Four Winds;"  III. "Tomorrow the Sea;" and V. "To What Listens."  "Homing" is a title from the nature writer John Hay;  "Tomorrow the Sea" is a phrase from a poem by Derek Walcott; and "To What Listens" is from a poem by the agrarian poet Wendell Berry.

Blue Earth has the subtitle 'Sinfonia Concertante for Orchestra,' which means that various solo voices are featured throughout the work, often in clear contrast to the tutti forces of the full orchestra. I have not named the concertante instruments in the score, nor do I station them at the front of the stage, but you will be introduced to them early in the piece. The principal cello begins Blue Earth alone, and is joined quite soon by other solo voices: principal violin (concertmaster), the principal woodwinds - flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon - and timpani. These seven musicians have important roles throughout the piece in various combinations of solo, duo, trio and quartet. Additional solo colors appear at various times, such as trios of flutes and bassoons in the third movement, and solo viola in the fourth. Blue Earth is dedicated to Christof Perick. --Donald Crockett

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