Mendocino Coast, September 2020

Commissioned by the San Francisco Bach Choir, Magen Solomon, director

SATB, Baroque violin, harpsichord

Duration: 3:08

The fall of 2020 was a strange and disorienting time. Musical groups were not able to play together and resorted to making music at a distance, with each performer recording their part at home. If the pandemic and the George Floyd protests weren't enough to make 2020 to seem like a profound year of reckoning, California experienced a series of epic wildfires. On September 8th my wife, my daughter and I got out of the house and went hiking at Sand Point State Park on the border of Sonoma and Mendocino counties. The fires in Mendocino County made our pictures look as if we had the sepia filter applied. (The smoke blew south to the Bay Area, making the September 9th the infamous "Orange Sky" day.) Later that fall, Magen Solomon and the SF Bach Choir commissioned me to write a piece that could be recorded socially distanced. This is the resulting piece, which combines performances of the singers of the SF Bach Choir, violinist Carla Moore, and harpsichordist Katherine Heater with photos and video we recorded on the Mendocino coast that day in September. It is an elegy for a difficult year.