Pulling Down the Clouds was commissioned by Tucson Guitar Society as a work for mezzo-soprano and guitar orchestra and premiered by the Tucson Guitar Orchestra during the Desert Song Festival in Tucson, AZ on April 2, 2023. For this work, I was incredibly lucky to collaborate with the leading literary light of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Dr. Ofelia Zepeda, recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and Regents Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. I selected several poems from Dr. Zepeda’s beautiful collection Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert that are written both in Tohono and English. I enjoyed the journey of setting her poems to music, and learning more about the language and culture of the people of the Sonoran Desert.
Pulling Down the Clouds was commissioned by Tucson Guitar Society as a work for mezzo-soprano and guitar orchestra and premiered by the Tucson Guitar Orchestra during the Desert Song Festival in Tucson, AZ on April 2, 2023. For this work, I was incredibly lucky to collaborate with the leading literary light of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Dr. Ofelia Zepeda, recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and Regents Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. I selected several poems from Dr. Zepeda’s beautiful collection Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert that are written both in Tohono and English. I enjoyed the journey of setting her poems to music, and learning more about the language and culture of the people of the Sonoran Desert.
Instrumentation: Mezzo-soprano, percussion (one player: bass drum, suspended cymbal, conga drums, triangle, finger cymbals, shakers, mark tree, glockenspiel), solo electric guitar, guitar ensemble (4 parts, with Guitar 1 divisi).
Approximate duration: 10 minutes
