Program notes:

Among Joshua Trees, at its essence, is about quiet celebration, reverence, and homage. For a physical and spiritual reference point to draw from, I looked to the Joshua Tree National Monument. This desert region in Southern California is home to the unique and striking Joshua tree. The area has an almost palpable religious atmosphere, and to me, many of its qualities offer musical connotations. The gnarled, yet beautifully symmetrical form of the Joshua trees influences much of the melodic material in the piece. The formidable heat and swells of warm wind common to this area appear in the music’s rhythmically active, bustling surface motion and also as rich, dense chords that slowly materialize and then fade away. These images have been wonderfully captured in a poem by Jennifer Dobbs, a collaborator of mine, called “Among Joshua Trees.” The spirit of my piece owes much
to her writing.
–Steven Gates


Among Joshua Trees

The wind remembers brushing across a bed
of ancient rivers, now hollowed to a shimmering

sand that gives no reflection. The wind gathers
dust like blankets around Joshua trees,

celebrates, trails fingers across ground and canyon
for glyphs to claim “never did water

do this better.” Doubtful, you may thirst
among the trees accustomed to the wind’s ambitions,

or you will become a believer in its casual way
of flinging your shouts to the sky.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
©2003 used with permission