Living Earth

Here is another remarkable release in our ongoing survey of the music of David Maslanka, a composer best-known for his output for wind ensemble, including his 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th Symphonies and major concertante works, most of which can be found on the Albany label. This recording presents a less-familiar side of the composer: music for symphony orchestra. Of these works, Maslanka has written, "My first diary entries on 11:11 are from 1998. It was then that I began noticing the time 11:11 on digital clocks. For no apparent reason, and far more often than might be coincidence, my eye would be drawn to a clock and it would read 11:11. At first I thought it was amusing, and then it became a bit spooky, as if something were trying to get my attention. I began to meditate on 11:11 and received images of impending crisis, and even disaster. Then I decided to write a piece out of those feelings. Surprisingly when the music did finally come out it was not in crisis mode. It is for the most part filled with a bright and hopeful spirit, a "new dance at the edge of the world"...I now believe that the earth is a living thing, and that humans are one part of its consciousness. I have been aware of a powerful "voice of the earth" for many years, and especially in my adopted western Montana...One of my life axioms is that there is no progress without crisis, and there is crisis to go through before we come to a right relationship with the planet. The new Symphony is the expression of hope for that right relationship."