Kiskadee (2023)
Kiskadee was commissioned by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. It was first performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Kevin John Edusei conductor, at Orchestra Hall, Detroit on October 19th 2023.
Composer Arlene Sierra acknowledges applause from the Orchestra Hall audience following the world premiere of Kiskadee, 19 October 2023 Photos: E Lease and E Thornton
Score excerpt 
To watch the DSO's livestream performance, click here
Programme Note:
Kiskadee is the most recent of Arlene Sierra’s works based on bird song, following directly from Bird Symphony (2021) commissioned by the Utah Symphony and Birds and Insects, Book Three (2023) commissioned by the Barbican Centre, London for pianist Sarah Cahill. Part of a larger series of pieces based on ideas from the natural world including Butterfly House (2022), Nature Symphony (2017), Urban Birds (2014), Butterflies Remember a Mountain (2013), and Colmena (2008) the mechanics and processes of nature are the basis for Sierra’s compositional approach, rather than offering a simple reflection or meditation. In Kiskadee this technical focus employs the composer’s transcriptions from field recordings as structural building blocks integral to the form of the overall work.
Kiskadees are described in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology database as “boisterous in both attitude and color: a black bandit’s mask, a yellow belly, and flashes of warm reddish- brown when they fly. [They] sit out in the open and attract attention with incessant kis- ka-dee calls and sallying flights.” The work employs a transcription of the kiskadee’s call as well as transcriptions of sounds from its environment. Later, the call of another bird, the troupial, supplants the kiskadee’s – mirroring the behavior of territorial overtaking that occurs in the wild. The kiskadee call later reasserts itself with renewed power, prevailing with its characteristic boisterousness.
Kiskadee was commissioned by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation for a world premiere with the Detroit Symphony, Kevin John Edusei, conductor.
To order scores and/or hire materials for Kiskadee, please click here
An additional four orchestras will perform the work through the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons: the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, part of a 30-orchestra consortium performing works by women composers commissioned by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. See the performances page on this site for more details.
Composer Arlene Sierra with conductor Kevin John Edusei backstage at Orchestra Hall
Bird Symphony (2021)
Bird Symphony was commissioned by the Utah Symphony as part of Arlene Sierra’s role as Composer in Association for the 2021-2022 season, with support from Composer in Association Sponsors Patricia Richards and Bill Nichols, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Composer Arlene Sierra acknowledges applause from the Abravanel Hall audience following the world premiere of her Bird Symphony at Abravanel Hall, 15 April 2022 Photos: G V Sierra and Kathleen Sykes
Score excerpt
Bird Symphony (2021) Programme Note:
1. Warblers 2. Hermits and Captives 3. Female Birdsong 4. UtahraptorBird Symphony is Sierra’s most recent large-scale orchestral work since Nature Symphony, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Philharmonic in 2017. A milestone in a series of pieces based on ideas from from the natural world, including Colmena (2008), Butterflies Remember a Mountain (2013), and Urban Birds (2014), Nature Symphony explored the mechanics and processes of natureas the basis for Sierra’s compositional approach, rather than offering a simple reflection or meditation. Bird Symphony takes this technical focus into birdsong, where the composer’s transcriptions from field recordings become structural building blocks that are integral to the symphony’s four contrasting movements. Additionally Sierra draws upon material from her solo piano album Birds and Insects, Book 2 (2015) and new material shared with Birds and Insects, Book 3, a work in progress that focuses on female birdsong – a burgeoning area of study by women ornithologists working today.
The first movement, Warblers, employs transcribed songs of both New and Old World warblers, namely the Black and White Warbler and the Sedge Warbler. The longest of the four movements, Warblers opens with the Black and White Warbler’s song in the upper registers of the orchestra. The song undergoes a thorough transformation in dialogue with other warbler calls, by turns reflective and ecstatic, until the full body of the orchestra announces the previously miniature, high-pitched Black and White Warbler song in all registers, with the full force of its power.
The second movement Hermits and Captives has the orchestra accompanied by a field recording of the Hermit Thrush, a bird that can be heard but is rarely seen. Composed during the period of Covid lockdown in the composer’s current home city of London in Spring 2020, the movement also features transcriptions of the songs of captive birds including canaries and finches, alongside imagined birds from Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. As in Respighi’s Pines of Rome from 1924, recorded birdsong becomes a time capsule that preserves through technology what is continually being lost in our era of environmental crisis.
The third movement Female Birdsong employs transcribed songs from female birds, long ignored in the historically male-dominated field of ornithology. While traditionally bird song has been viewed as primarily a male trait, research shows that female song occurs in many songbird species and likely existed in the ancestors of all modern songbirds. Calls and songs from female Black-bellied Wrens, Venezuelan Troupials, and Magpie-larks feature prominently in the movement.
The final movement Utahraptor is an imagining of the eponymous feathered dinosaur, exploring both its avian and saurian characteristics. Birdsong fragments from earlier movements, particularly the Hermit Thrush, are recast in music that has an altogether different quality, transforming from elusive songbird to looming predator.
Bird Symphony was first performed by the Utah Symphony, Thierry Fischer, Music Director, at Abravanel Hall, Salt Lake City on April 15th, 2022.
©2022 Shawn G. Miller
To order scores and/or hire materials for Bird Symphony, please click here
Composer Arlene Sierra acknowledges applause from the Abravanel Hall audience following the second performance of her Bird Symphony Photo: G V Sierra
“What I like about her music is that everything is suggested; it’s not a statement,” Fischer said. “For example: if you see a bird flying, it’s so beautiful, and it creates a kind of emotion. But the bird doesn’t fly to create an emotion. The bird flies because that’s what a bird does.”
“It’s a little bit like that in Arlene’s music, “ adds Fischer. “She’s not writing the Bird Symphony to make people cry. She writes because it’s her way to be inspired by nature and by insects and all that. And then it creates beauty, but she’s not writing to create beauty. This aspect of both the suggestive and what’s behind it is, to me as a French impressionist conductor, absolutely thrilling and super motivating.”
– Thierry Fischer, as interviewed in Utah Arts Review, "Arlene Sierra’s “Bird Symphony” to take flight with Utah Symphony"
Review
Sierra’s “Bird Symphony” soars in a rich Utah Symphony program
World premieres of orchestral works are sometimes fraught with mishap, and worse, indifference. Where a new piece is tucked away between Beethoven and Shostakovich, it is sometimes under-rehearsed, misinterpreted, or under-appreciated by an audience.
Fortunately, in Thierry Fischer and the Utah Symphony, Arlene Sierra—the orchestra’s composer-in-association—had the privilege of premiering her Bird Symphony with a conductor, ensemble and audience who know her work well.
After hearing her Nature Symphony last week and her tone poem Aquilo earlier in the season, it was thrilling to hear her apply her distinctive voice to a powerful new piece that provided a triumphant capstone to her season-long collaboration with the orchestra.
Music director Thierry Fischer programmed the Bird Symphony this week as part of a progressive musical meal that began with Haydn’s Symphony No. 11 for 20 instruments and gradually added more until culminating in the full sound of Elgar’s triumphant tone poem (Alassio) In the South. Along the way, the audience was treated to Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto featuring soloist Anthony McGill.
Sierra’s Bird Symphony shares many similarities with her Nature Symphony, including its motivic development and use of layered ostinati to imitate natural processes. In the new work, most of the motivic material came from actual bird calls, but Sierra developed them into something new, ecstatic, and far from its avian inspiration
The first movement, “Warblers,” began with an urgent energy, its source material sounding like a bird sensing danger. As the call ricocheted throughout the orchestra in a series of layers and loops, Sierra created a completely alien soundscape. It was as if we were seeing a frightening world through the warbler’s eyes or perhaps the warbler had flown us to a strange and uninhabited planet. Aided by four percussionists—including both xylophone and marimba—the orchestra built to an intense rhythmic climax.
In “Hermits and Captives,” (second movement), the orchestra responds to a recording of a Hermit Thrush call with transcriptions of birdsong from finches and canaries. Over a drone in the cello and mournful tones in the piano and double bass, a plaintive melody in the flute rose and spread to the strings, where it dissipated into pizzicato. As in the second movement of the Nature Symphony, Sierra used sustained low notes to create a dark, atmospheric mood. In the Bird Symphony those notes are a slowed-down bird call, which spread to horns and low brass, creating a powerful sense of motion, and transforming the movement from merely atmospheric to something more substantial and profound.
Driven forward by the marimba, Sierra’s trademark ostinati were at their most mesmerizing in the third movement “Female Birdsong.”
The finale “Utahraptor” created an infectious rhythm that took the audience on a primordial journey from birdsong to whatever noise its dinosaur ancestor might have made. The rhythmic motives were particularly effective when they spread to the bassoons, creating a unique and delightful sound, and led to an exciting, unique climax.
About a third of the audience gave Bird Symphony a standing ovation, which is quite a feat for a 25-minute long, sometimes discordant piece.
– Rick Mortensen, Utah Arts Review
To order scores and/or hire materials for Bird Symphony, please click here
Nature Symphony (2017)
Nature Symphony was commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and BBC Radio 3, and is Sierra’s first large-scale orchestral work since the piano concerto Art of War, written for Huw Watkins and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in 2010. That work was a milestone in a series of pieces based on ideas from game theory and military strategy, including Surrounded Ground (2008), Cicada Shell (2007), and Truel (2005). Nature Symphony is the largest statement so far in a parallel series of works that explore concepts from the natural world. As with the pieces Urban Birds (2014), Colmena (2008), and Butterflies Remember a Mountain (2013), it is the mechanics and processes of nature, rather than a simple reflection or meditation, that form the basis for Sierra’s compositional approach.
Listen to excerpts from each movement, performed by the BBC Philharmonic, Ludovic Morlot, conductor:
1. Mountain of Butterflies
2. The Black Place (after O’Keeffe)
3. Bee Rebellion
Score excerpt
2. The Black Place (after O’Keeffe)
3. Bee Rebellion
Score excerpt
The first movement of Nature Symphony, Mountain of Butterflies, takes building blocks from the piano trio Butterflies Remember a Mountain and expands them exponentially, to give a sense to multiplicity and minute detailing. The trio explored the idea of migration, bypassing obstacles and sense of continuing timeless cycles, and Mountain of Butterflies is the destination - like the eponymous site in Mexico where monarch butterflies complete their migration and form a literal mountain of beautiful, ancient insects. Memory plays its part as well, as some elements from the earlier work are remembered from Ravel’s piano trio, and others are remembered from buzzing, insect world of Sierra’s ensemble work Colmena.
The second movement of Nature Symphony, entitled The Black Place (after O’Keeffe) borrows its title from the work of iconic American painter Georgia O’Keeffe, whose paintings of a stretch of black hills in New Mexico have a similarly austere but slow-burning aspect. O’Keeffe made multiple studies of this far-flung empty landscape in the 1940’s. Previously a remote outpost, the site is now at great risk of fracking by U.S. corporations. The movement uses layered melodic figures from Sierra’s song setting Hearing Things (2008), to the passionately environmentalist poem by Catherine Carter (excerpted here), “I have begun to hear things... Thinking of the hole in the hill lidded and simmering, taut as an angry boil, I quail.”
The final movement Bee Rebellion takes up ideas of the natural world that resonate with composer’s preoccupation with strategy and the theory of games – as well as the life of bees. Subject to chemical and hormonal changes, a previously orderly society of bees can collapse into rebellion. Bee Rebellion explores a buzzing, quasi-mechanical orchestral texture that is subjected to outbursts, both cyclical and unpredictable, resulting in an accumulation that brings no resolution. As with game theory scenarios, the same conditions create a different result the second time, employing more remote parallels and frenetic circular processes, until a sudden flip of a switch ends the game, and the life of the hive where it takes place.
Nature Symphony was first performed by the BBC Philharmonic, Ludovic Morlot, conductor, at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on November 25th, 2017.
Programme note ©2017 Shawn G. Miller
To order scores and/or hire materials for Nature Symphony, please click here
Reviews
BBC Philharmonic / Morlot review – striking orchestral ideas in new Sierra symphony • Arlene Sierra takes us back to nature in striking new symphony
Ludovic Morlot led a debut of Arlene Sierra’s Nature Symphony, which nods to everything from bees to the dark landscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe
Born in the US but based in Britain, Arlene Sierra is perhaps best known on this side of the Atlantic for her feisty, energy-packed ensemble pieces. But her catalogue also includes a number of orchestral pieces, several of which have been taken up by Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. That made Morlot a natural choice to conduct the first performance of Sierra’s Nature Symphony, which was commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic.
The title suggests something programmatic, and the symphony’s three movements all have evocative titles, but there is nothing in them that’s obviously descriptive. The mechanics of natural processes fascinate Sierra and find their way into her music, so it is the idea of endless cycles of migration, year after year, that creates the steadily accumulating loops of the opening Mountain of Butterflies, while the sense of something ominous and threatening in the melodic fragments and ticking ostinatos of the slow central Black Place was inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s dark paintings of New Mexico.
The finale, Bee Rebellion, is based on the phenomenon of hive collapse that is sometimes seen in bee colonies, when the insect society can suddenly break down into anarchy; it’s music of unpredictable cycles and accumulations, with taunting wind solos, all cut short by a brassy, percussion-driven ending that offers no escape. Lasting just over 20 minutes, the symphony does what Sierra sets out to do with impressive economy and a succession of striking orchestral ideas.
- Andrew Clements, The Guardian
Butterflies, landscapes and bees in Arlene Sierra's new Nature Symphony
★★★★
Arlene Sierra’s music is performed more in her native USA than in the UK where she now lives. Let's hope this is about to change because the first performance of her Nature Symphony by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Ludovic Morlot gave us an intriguing and enjoyable work.
The three movements of Sierra’s Symphony have subtitles. The first is Mountain of Butterflies. According to the programme notes this refers to the “site in Mexico where monarch butterflies complete their migration and form a literal mountain of beautiful ancient insects”. In it the composer builds on an earlier piece, her piano trio entitled Butterflies Remember a Mountain. From the opening notes a remarkable sound-world is created with a large orchestra often being handled very delicately. Moments with piano and harp glistening over a large body of shimmering strings were particularly striking.
The second movement is entitled The Black Place (after O’Keefe) referencing the work by American painter Georgia O’Keefe of black hills in New Mexico. This atmospheric and often hypnotic movement made me think of some Bartók’s "night music". Bee Rebellion refers to the behaviour of bees in a hive and to game theory. Listeners aware of this might expect something dauntingly intellectual, but instead we had a build-up of melodic fragments with the focus shifting from one group of instruments to another – and some bee-like buzzing.
I am somewhat sceptical of the evocation or representation of the human or natural world in music but for me the Nature Symphony was memorable for its creation of wonderful sounds from a large orchestra, ever–changing rhythms, ear-catching snatches of melody, contrasts of mood and a feeling that it all came together as a satisfying whole as a symphony should.
- Peter Connors, Bachtrack.com
Review: Arlene Sierra's Nature Symphony
Two years ago I interviewed Arlene Sierra for this blog, ahead of a BBC Proms concert featuring her Butterflies Remember a Mountain. It is inspired by the annual mass migration of monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico: each delicate insect making its infinitesimal contribution to the shimmering swarm; an unchanging annual cycle millions of years old; the sheer unimaginability of the scale of the endeavour, and a mysterious kink in the migration route are the source material for an intricate piece for piano trio.
Premiered on Saturday, Sierra’s Nature Symphony is another example of her fascination with the natural world and the first of its three movements draws directly from the earlier work. Set in a fast 5/4 time the rhythmic drive of the earlier trio is maintained, while continually reusing and developing its material, and using the larger forces of the orchestra to introduce minute detailing into the texture. This gives a sense of a stream (of migrating butterflies) moving inexorably forward, but in such a swarm that the whole presents an image in stasis, until suddenly they are at their destination, the Butterfly Mountain that gives the movement its name.
There is a satisfying symmetry in the overall shape of Nature Symphony: the third movement, Bee Rebellion, matches the first in rhythmic energy, and is in a similar tempo, but in 3/4 time seems busier. The pulse is destabilised by an insistent but irregular undertow of plucked double basses, while the violins and winds share a dialogue comprising short phrases that develop imperceptibly through the movement. Likening the life of the hive with elements of game theory - another favourite influence - Sierra creates a sense of frenetic but ultimately fruitless activity, and the movement ends with a sudden percussive crescendo and silence, a reminder of the colony collapse that bees are increasingly prone to, perhaps.
In the middle is a movement, titled The Black Place (after O'Keeffe), that is contrastingly song-like, with a long, slow melody shaped by fragments passed between horn, cor anglais and piccolo, and on through the orchestra, accompanied by long, held notes in the low strings. The rhythmic element is again there, but as a quiet, irregular pulse of plucked strings, harp and marimba, later taken up by piano, timpani and low brass. Inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings of the austere landscapes of New Mexico, the sharing out of these rhythmic, melodic and harmonic ingredients leads to a musical landscape whose tints, rather than colours, are constantly shifting.
In the middle is a movement, titled The Black Place (after O'Keeffe), that is contrastingly song-like, with a long, slow melody shaped by fragments passed between horn, cor anglais and piccolo, and on through the orchestra, accompanied by long, held notes in the low strings. The rhythmic element is again there, but as a quiet, irregular pulse of plucked strings, harp and marimba, later taken up by piano, timpani and low brass. Inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings of the austere landscapes of New Mexico, the sharing out of these rhythmic, melodic and harmonic ingredients leads to a musical landscape whose tints, rather than colours, are constantly shifting.
This middle movement is a reminder of the composer’s concern at the fragility of nature: O'Keeffe's 'Black Place' - the Bisti Badlands - is under threat from fracking. The movement borrows melodic figures from Sierra's own 2008 setting of Hearing Things, a passionately environmentalist poem by Catherine Carter. In a recent interview Arlene Sierra told Rhinegold’s Katy Wright ‘I don’t see how anyone living today can fail to realise the urgency of what is going on with the natural world and what we human beings are doing to change things. I have a little boy now, who’s five, and I’m so conscious of how different the environment is from when I was a child. It’s a personal sense of urgency.’
- Laurence Rose, Natural Light
Other works by Sierra take on fascinatingly diverse subject matter such as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and military strategy, evolutionary biology, entomology, game theory, architecture and the built environment, siege engines and the poetry of Pablo Neruda. These works have been performed internationally and she has been the recipient of many awards such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Charles Ives Fellowship and the Takemitsu Prize in 2001. So while she might be a new name to many, or some, in the audience her Nature Symphony certainly arrives with a level of expectation, and it doesn’t disappoint.
The main subject matter of this new piece is obviously nature and within Sierra’a music the characteristics of this derive inwardly from compositional, instrumental and artistic ideas, and the characteristics of the orchestra itself, rather than through the composer herself trying to outwardly impose impressions of the natural world upon the orchestra. Her approach is to concentrate on actions that happen within nature and the nuts and bolts of its systems and processes then draw these out of each instrument to construct suggestive, quite meticulous statements of sound. Each movement of the Nature Symphony is slightly programmatic being based around specific sites where natural phenomena occur, on natural objects or things and also drawing influence from paintings. Prior themes reoccur through her interest within the piece in insects and strategy. She also borrows in movements one and two from previous works, her Butterflies Remember a Mountain (2013) and Hearing Things (2008) respectively.
The first movement ‘Mountain of Butterflies’ makes reference to a location in Mexico where Monarch butterflies end their migration en masse and become a butterfly mountain. It relies heavily on the full range of percussion instruments, from gongs, timpani, glockenspiel and xylophone down to different egg shakers. Ideas of mass and density are played off against those of lightness, delicacy and immateriality. This explorative scope perhaps mimics the scale of the natural world. It’s an assured, enthralling opening movement and the orchestra under Morlot’s alert direction show they have the necessary refinement to convey the intricacies, textures and balance of Sierra’s sound world.
In the perturbing second movement ‘The Black Place (after O’Keeffe)’ pizzicato strings and a muted, repetitive harp figure come to the fore lending a feeling of stasis and standstill while also signifying the organic matter that exists in the isolated, stark environment of the high desert. The music holds a near sinister and simmering darkness as it evocates Georgia O’Keeffe’s arid, dusty and empty paintings of New Mexico landscapes. And it is a kind of night music that Sierra delivers here. The title refers not only to the state of the geographical, physical landscape but to the mental condition too, while also perhaps making reference to O’Keeffe’s gradually failing sight. Much like those paintings, highly colourful yet pervaded by a foreboding blackness, it’s an ambiguous section of music that seems to come into and disappear out of focus, being both vivid and tense together.
This tension continues into the third movement ‘Bee Rebellion’ where Sierra explores ideas around the order and conditions imposed by nature and what happens when this goes wrong. This is either based on the end of the natural life-cycle of the hive when worker bees destroy what they have built (due to exposure to wax of a different chemical composition than normal that makes them aggressive and reproductively competitive), or it could refer to what is now known as Colony Collapse Disorder where worker bees simply abandon the hive. Suitably the music in this movement drones, hums and buzzes. Through sharp dynamic contrasts it fashions or engineers the unbalanced activity of the hive.
Nature Symphony is full of arresting, captivating and very mesmeric music. Sierra's sensibility towards movement and rhythm is abundantly present in the work. Rich and detailed in textures the music moves around mechanisms and somewhat clandestine systems that stay rhythmically and melodically close together yet expand through distinct changes in timbre and resonance. Sierra takes a bow on stage afterwards to warm, appreciative applause and it is a privilege to be among the first audience to hear the work.
- Simon Halworth, The Manchester Review
To order scores and/or hire materials for Nature Symphony, please click here
Arlene Sierra Vol. 3 - Butterflies Remember a Mountain (Bridge)
"...a disc that merits and rewards repeated listening." Classical Ear, February 2019
"...a wonderful chamber music issue that enthrals from first bar to last." Gramophone, January 2019
"...a thrilling display of alacrity and acrobatics." Records International, December 2018
Bridge Records has just released the latest disc in Arlene Sierra's portrait series, and it is already receiving rave reviews in the international press.
Arlene Sierra, Vol. 3: Butterflies Remember a Mountain is now available through all major outlets, featuring performances by the Benedetti-Elschenbroich-Grynyuk Trio – the trio of Nicola Benedetti, Leonard Elschenbroich, and Alexei Gruynyuk – as well as the Horszowski Trio, and piano duo Quattro Mani.
Order now from Bridge Records
Click here to view the earlier discs in the series, Arlene Sierra, Vol. 1, and Game of Attrition: Arlene Sierra, Vol. 2
Click here to see Sierra's other music at Bridge Records
Videos
A Selection of Performances and Interviews
Kiskadee (2023) - Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Kevin John Edusei, cond. Livestream premiere performance
Discovering Kiskadee by Arlene Sierra - Detroit Symphony introduction video
Bird Symphony (2021) - Utah Symphony video interview and rehearsal
Nature Symphony (2017) - BBC Philharmonic, Ludovic Morlot, cond. BBC Radio 3 broadcast excerpt with score
Butterflies Remember a Mountain (2013) - performance by Nicola Benedetti, Leonard Elschenbroich, and Alexei Grynyuk
Ritual in Transfigured Time (2016) - interview and performance excerpts by the Goldfield Ensemble
Urban Birds (2014) - interview and performance excerpts by Sarah Nicolls, Xenia Pestova and Kathleen Supové
Avian Mirrors (2013) performed by Jesse Mills, violin and Raman Ramakrishnan, cello
NewMusicBox Magazine (2013) - Arlene Sierra: The Evolution of Process
Arlene Sierra - Moler (2012) for orchestra [w/ score]
Insects in Amber (2010) - performance by the Mivos Quartet
Ballistae (2000) - performance by the Grossman Ensemble, Brad Lubman, cond.