Eric Tuan’s “Vision in the Coast Range”
Composer-in-Residence
Eric Tuan
2023-24 Composer-in-Residence Eric Tuan’s first commissioned work of the season is Vision in the Coast Range, which we’ll premiere on our December 2023 concert set Sun, Moon, and Stars: A Heavenly Christmas.
Eric drew inspiration for this piece from a personal connection with the California sky and landscape, and from the vivid poetry of one of California’s great writers. Here is his reflection on the creation of this wonderful work.
During a visit to a monastery in Big Sur several years ago, I remember having my breath taken away by the stunning clarity of the starry sky over the ocean. When Magen asked me to write a piece on the theme of "Sun, Moon, and Stars," that memory encouraged me to seek inspiration in this distinctively California landscape and the poetry of one of its preeminent writers, Robinson Jeffers.
At work on “Vision in the Coast Range” while backpacking in the Warner Mountains
In his poem “The Coast-Range Christ,” Jeffers celebrates the presence of the sacred in the California landscape. He imagines God as a hawk swooping downward to the dust, an eagle celebrating the beauty of creation, and as a lover "bringing wild wine freedom on his lips to the earth."
The consummate poet of the California coast, Jeffers sought to reanimate and revivify the natural world in a society that prized speed, technology, and abstraction. From his stone house in Big Sur, he sang the wild beauty of a world much bigger than humanity, an untamable living power that "...knows the people are a tide / That swells and in time will ebb, and all / Their works dissolve."
I couldn't think of a more timely message as we urgently seek to renew our relationship with the earth. In his illuminating work The Great Derangement, the Bengali author Amitav Ghosh argues that climate change is as much a spiritual as a technological problem. The wildfires, droughts, and storms we face shatter our illusion of the natural world as inert and devoid of agency, as a resource to be consumed. Like Jeffers, Ghosh calls on us to acknowledge the earth as a living being, imbued with strength, spiritual power, and agency.
Vision in the Coast Range is my choral contribution to this effort. Throughout, I try to match the ecstatic, joyful quality of Jeffers’ imagery with equally vivid music. Singers are encouraged to communicate with each other visually and musically throughout. Cultivating a steady, relaxed groove with singers on the backside of the beat will support the rhythmic vitality of the piece.
With gratitude to the landscapes of the California coast ranges for forming me over a lifetime, and to the South Warner Wilderness Area for giving me the opportunity to compose in a stunning natural setting.
–Eric Tuan
Don’t miss the world premiere of Vision in the Coast Range!
Sun, Moon, and Stars: A Heavenly Christmas
Performances 12/10 (San Francisco), 12/16 (Palo Alto), and 12/17 (Oakland). Details/tickets ➟
