Everything Flowing
On August 25, 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill creating the National Park Service, he established a precedent for the preservation and conservation of parts of our Earth. The power of the bill’s language, which asks that we leave designated sites “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations” resonated not only through the United States, but throughout the world. Its sentiment is timeless, and as prescient as ever, as we grapple with the effects of climate change, and as we understand how the smallest of creatures that thrives in our parks is essential for the preservation of our own lives on this planet. Everything Flowing takes its title from a passage in John Muir’s “My First Summer in the Sierra”: “Everything is flowing – going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks...While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood...in Nature’s warm heart.”
Muir reminds us that the smallest of objects is essential to the vitality of our ecosystems, and to the viability of our own lives. Everything Flowing explores these notions in three small movements. We open with a solemn hymn to the Earth, proceed to take a dizzying dance alongside the endangered monarch butterflies as they traverse the continent, and conclude with a chorale with a responsorial structure that reminds us of our interconnectedness with the natural world.
Aristea Mellos
Aristea Mellos is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music with a passion for chamber music and art song. She is a recipient of grants from the Presser Foundation, the Earle Brown Foundation, the Australia Council of the Arts, and the American Australian Association. Aristea holds a DMA and MM in Composition from The Eastman School of Music.
www.aristeamellos.com