Conni Ellisor: KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE. Vanderbilt Wind Symphony - Thomas Verrier, Conductor

Vanderbilt Wind Symphony
Thomas Verrier, Conductor
College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA)
National Conference – February 16, 2023

KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE

All of us had something that got us through the pandemic. My go-to was running, and with the addition of my brand new iPods, I discovered the joy of listening to podcasts. I've always felt an affinity for trees and been fascinated with chemistry, so imagine my excitement when I heard scientist Suzanne Simard interviewed on Fresh Air. She declared that trees are "social creatures" that "communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for all humans."

I ordered her book, The Mother Tree, post-haste, and devoured it. Professor Simard has been working 30 years in the forests of the Canadian northwest and she has proven beyond any doubt, that trees are not simply sources of timber, but that they are social, cooperative creatures connected through vast underground networks not that different from our internet. They communicate through chemicals identical to our own transmitters, signals moving by ions across fungal membranes like our synapses. She has proven that trees care for each other, recognize their own, send warnings of parasites and diseases, and give of themselves to protect others.

About this time, I received an exciting joint commission to write a new piece for wind ensemble. What an opportunity to express this new knowledge with a plethora of powerful horns, unlimited percussion, the beauty of winds! It was the perfect subject for my piece, and as I thought about it, I imagined all the human activities these trees have witnessed. Many living more than hundreds of years, and some living thousands, they have been the silent watchers, the guardians of our lives. That's when I decided to call the piece "Keepers of the House."

My goal is that this piece is a powerful and intimate meditation on nature, science, and relationship. That it brings to each of you a compelling and personal interconnection with nature and with each other. I hope in some small way, this piece can bring a heightened awakening to our relationships with the plant world, and through that, broaden our own relationship to life here on earth.

A hallmark of Conni Ellisor's works is that they are accessible, exciting, and inspiring to musicians and audiences alike. Her critically-acclaimed compositions are the beneficiaries of a brilliantly varied career. She has used her journey-formal training at Juilliard, early success in the classical world as a member of the Denver Symphony, concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, first violin in the Athena Quartet (now the Colorado Quartet), and eventually as assistant concertmaster and soloist with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, along with extensive work in the commercial world as a top-call session violinist and arranger-to inform her current musical statements.