River Muse
Musical Meditations on the Damariscotta River

Created by Wilhelmina Smith and Joe Zizzo.
Featuring performers Bridget Kibbey, Hawk Henries, and Lester Lynch.

“Aurora Rising” from Northern Lights by Kati Agócs
Performed by Bridget Kibbey

“The postlude ‘Aurora Rising’ is a perpetual-motion movement that accumulates resonance over the entire range of the harp, with special attention to the instrument’s extreme registers. This movement evokes the emergence of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis).”
–Kati Agócs

“Aurora Rising” begins in the lowest registers of the harp, with repeated scalar motions in gradually ascending tonalities, evoking both the “Aurora” (dawn) and the “Borealis" (northern) elements as light emerges over the shore of a northeastern Maine river. As daylight emerges through the upward motion of the music’s four-note motives, it reveals peaks of repeated high notes, like crests of waves from an incoming tide. Rapid notes in the upper register of the harp increase in intensity until they stop abruptly, as the globe of the rising sun appears suddenly. A chromatic descending line then initiates the music’s retreat. The piece slowly drifts away, as a setting sun, with light playing on the strings of the harp, and the shadows of the day presiding. Golden strands of light shimmer over the calming water; shadows bouncing off riverside goldenrod, the harp’s strings, its gold crown and the performer’s golden hair, moving gently upward, using music as a metaphor for light and darkness, and the river reflecting the tides and vicissitudes of life.
–Note by Wilhelmina Smith, Artistic Director

About the Damariscotta River:
“The Damariscotta River estuary is a tidal dominated embayment with a 9.5 ft. tide range. The DMC is located half-way between the open waters of the Gulf of Maine and the upper reaches of the river where it turns into Great Salt Bay. Local marine environments include rocky shores, sandy beaches, mud flats, and small sea grass beds. High organic production in the Gulf of Maine supports a diversity of benthic and pelagic species. The Damariscotta River is one of several local estuaries that provide a gradient of environments varying in fresh water input, with resultant changes in types and quantities of organic production and consequent changes in biogeographic zonation. The complexity of the Maine coastline allows for a wide range of exposure to waves and ice, further adding to the diversity of habitats. River shorelines are protected from wind and waves compared to the outer coast. Rocky shores are generally covered with rockweed in the rocky intertidal with the shoreline descending to a mostly soft bottom beginning at 30 ft. of depth. Deeper areas of the river reach to 120ft. in some locations.”
—Note from The University of Maine, Darling Marine Center, Walpole, Maine

Earth and Sky by Hawk Henries
Performed by Hawk Henries

Set in an estuary in the Damariscotta River, this film lets the listener become a part of the environment they are viewing. The synergy of the grasses and wind, insects and fish, allow the music to partake in the naturally occurring interactions within this wooded river inlet. Like the human breath that gives the flute its song, the wind breathes life into quaking leaves and swaying cattails. Nature’s ebb and flow, reflected in the calm river tides, become the harmony and accompaniment to Henries’ plaintive song.
—Note by Wilhelmina Smith, Artistic Director

“The flute’s body and voice reminds us of the interrelatedness, interdependence, and sacredness of all people and all of Creation. Flutes have a long history of articulating certain ideas for which words might not be adequate. Their bodies and voices are a profound manifestation of the life-giving power of the relationship between masculine and feminine energies – earth and sky, water and fire, humans and nature. When I’m looking at nature – trees, insects, birds, stones, all the other things we live with – they seem to be engaged in the activity that they’re intended to be engaged in. There’s a relationship that exists between those things, and what we could consider to be a respect for that relationship. There is a common thread that is honored and which enables the exchange and perpetuation of that life-force that gives them their existence and that also connects them to each other. Each tree in the forest is unique and uniquely important to the well-being of the forest as a whole, yet also shares profound commonalities with all other trees.”
—Note by Hawk Henries, composer, flutist

“Oh Shenandoah” — Traditional, arr. Gordon Getty
Performed by Lester Lynch and Bridget Kibbey

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away, you rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.

Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Away, you rolling river
Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.

Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you,
Away, you rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you,
Away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.

-Anonymous

This film evokes the symbolic power and poetry of rivers. Composed in a major key, with a flowing, andante tempo, the music’s mood is reflective, with accompanying harp arpeggiations mirroring the river’s gentle waves. Fog rolls in, creating a memory of another river, the “wide Missouri,” with themes of love, abandonment, and the hardships of life visually represented through the water’s swells, cold fog, and wide crossing. Perched on a rocky shore, the singer is stationary while the water “rolls” by, carrying his wishes, dreams, and love away. The music evokes the mysteries of life while conveying the power and motion of the river, leaving us to contemplate the ancient metaphor of “crossing the river” as a voyage to the next life. The video ends with one final image; that of a coastal pine dripping with dew—a gesture as simple as the song itself, a teardrop of nature.
–Note by Wilhelmina Smith, Artistic Director