two scenes from the basin

Program Note:

two scenes from the basin is a work for string orchestra that synthesizes themes inspired by the Coen Brothers’ 2007 film No Country For Old Men with the experience of passing abandoned vehicles along the interstate on the Texas side of the Permian Basin. Through the lens of these abandoned vehicles, two scenes explores images of the Basin’s harsh, yet enchantingly beautiful landscape; wide open spaces seemingly alien and uninhabitable are jarringly interrupted by the violence of human expansion across the desert before ultimately yielding to stillness, a reflection on the powerful sense of isolation that will always be fundamental to the Permian Basin experience.

At its core, two scenes from the basin is a celebration of the unworldly qualities of the Basin conjoined with the ideal that someday the landscape will overcome mankind’s transgressions upon it and regain its fullest own strange and ethereal self.