botanical gardens

This piece draws inspiration from my deeply emotional experiences in California nature this past summer. The first movement sonically recounts my visit to the stunning Sonoma botanical gardens, with its breathtaking views and gorgeous Japanese flora, and many intertwining trails past ponds and streams. The second movement attempts to capture the dizzying intensity of the John Muir trail hike to the top of Vernal fall in Yosemite. The scorching heat and incredibly steep incline for many consecutive hours was as close as mortally possible to a trial by fire, and many times did I desperately want to give up and turn around. But I knew I had to see the view from the edge of the waterfall, and it was beyond rewarding. This movement encapsulates the sheer power of the water surging over the cliff, and the transcendental experience of witnessing it. The final movement slows down with a pointillistic depiction of a butterfly garden in Vallejo, with the paths of two butterflies being traced in canon between the flute and piano. The first reiteration of this theme from earlier in the piece is exact, imitating the experience of initially surveying the scenery, with the overlapping paths of many fluttering wings making it difficult to comprehend much. The second iteration serves to “zoom in” on the geometrical beauty of the butterflies’ wings and the paths they trace through the air, utilizing a 12-tone row and its transformations. The third iteration zooms back out, returning to a diatonic landscape and simply revelling in the beautiful chaos, now with a better understanding of the butterflies’ nature. Finally, the piece ends with restatements of material from each of the movements, tying each encounter together into the shared emotions across each experience from the summer, and leaving off with a hint of wonder and bewilderment. -Leah Graalfs, October 2025