Description

Erosion’s Grotto  for SATB Choir and Marimba Quartet OR Piano is Movement 3 of Death Valley Symphony by Jenni Brandon.  Death Valley Symphony  gives voice to the stories of Death Valley National Park in California. Offered in a spirit of reverence and care, the work reflects our shared responsibility to protect our National Parks and preserve access to their enduring beauty. It also honors the Timbisha Shoshone People, whose deep presence, knowledge, and relationship with this land long predate its designation as a national park and continue to shape its living history.

This movement may be performed individually.

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Erosion’s Grotto for SATB Choir and Marimba Quartet OR Piano evokes the vivid, mineral-rich landscape of Artist’s Palette in Death Valley National Park. The hills along Artist’s Palette Drive shimmer with a rainbow of colors including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and pink created by volcanic deposits rich in iron oxides and chlorite. This ever shifting, erosion-carved terrain forms the visual and emotional foundation of the work. Setting the text of the original poem written by Brandon Krieg for this work, the opening lines “Rain-carved foothills, oxidized / mineral piles pooling shadows” immediately immerse us in this elemental world. The choir and marimba quartet function as equal partners throughout, together painting a world of water, sand, stone, and mineral rainbows of color. The marimba quartet opens with gestures that suggest rain striking sand and rock, then gather momentum like a car winding through the hills on Artists Palette Drive, as the choir gives voice to the unfolding landscape. As the music progresses, the boundary between observer and environment dissolves. Landscape and body reflect one another, culminating in a moment of heightened awareness in an ecstatic crossing, in the poem’s words, of the “blood-god barrier”—where all becomes one: to “be held in this beholding.” This movement flows into the next movement of Dark Sky as daylight shifts to darkness. Erosion’s Grotto was commissioned by the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, Bel Canto Cedar Valley, directed by Alice Reid Pruisner, and Heartland Marimba.  It receives its world premiere on April 11 at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center.

(Erosion’s Grotto is designed to flow attacca into Movement IV: Dark Sky if performing together)