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‘Guardians of GC’ to be featured on Fourth

New music for the new millennium. That’s the idea behind Continental Harmony, a nationwide celebration which will see 58 music works debut this year, including 20 on the Fourth of July.

Representing Arizona in this celebration is the Grand Canyon Music Festival and composer Brent Michael Davids. Davids’ will kick off the 17th season of the local festival at 7:30 p.m. on July 4 at the Shrine of the Ages. His piece “Guardians of the Grand Canyon” will be featured.

On July 3, there will be a performance of “The Tramp and the Roughrider” at 7:30 p.m., also at the Shrine.

Brent Michael Davids will perform ‘Guardians of the Grand Canyon’ at the special Fourth of July event put on by the Grand Canyon Music Festival.

Davids combines elements of both Native American and European American artists. Davids is a member of the Mahican Nation and trained in classical European traditions. He was commissioned by the Grand Canyon Music Festival to create a work that celebrates the nation’s diverse cultures.

“My new work, ‘Guardians of the Grand Canyon,’ is an actual Havasupai Ram Dance composed into a modern piece of chamber music,” Davids said. “The Ram Dance is not ‘collaged’ upon the new work, but actually composed into it, unlike many contemporary pieces which use synthesizers to create collages of Native American songs in a New Age music style.”

The Fourth of July evening concert will also include Jon Deak’s “Metaphor” for solo cello, based on the writings of Willa Cather; “Canyon Shadows,” by Katherine Hoover, which debuted at last year’s festival; and another piece by Davids, “In Wisconsin Woods.”

Davids’ featured “Guardians of the Grand Canyon” was inspired by the Havasupai, who consider themselves to be the guardians of the Canyon. It is written for metal flute, crystal flute, clay flute, wood flute, two percussionists and Havasupai traditional dancers.

Havasupai connection

Davids said the piece is an expression of the Havasupai’s deep reverence for the Canyon and their struggle to protect it. His view of the natural wonder focuses on the indigenous people who have lived there for centuries, along with the Canyon’s characteristic animals and plants, but his vision is expressed through a synthesis of Native and non-Native traditions that reaches out to embrace a world audience.

The work is also designed to create a sense of the vast spaces in the Canyon and to create the illusion of hearing the music from within its immense walls. The title is taken from the name of a group of Havasupai dancers whose art is incorporated within the piece. The Havasupai people have lived for hundreds of years on the rim or the floor of the Grand Canyon.

“There have been enough pieces written about the Grand Canyon’s geography,” Davids said. “I felt it was my purpose to let the people of the Canyon speak, so I invited the Guardians of the Grand Canyon, a group of Havasupai dancers, to do their Ram Dance within my composition.

“The Ram Dance was created when four rams were found senselessly slaughtered in the Canyon,” Davids continued. “The Havasupai knew they needed to do something to both heal themselves of negative infestations and to encourage the Canyon to heal itself.”

Special relationship

It’s the relationship between the Havasupai and the Canyon which served as a focus for the new piece.

“The Havasupai live in a reciprocal relationship with the Grand Canyon in which both parties are mutually interdependent on one another,” Davids said. “It is a life and death reciprocity — the Canyon needs the Havasupai to survive, just as the Havasupai need the Canyon. The importance of this shared existence is the true significance of the Grand Canyon and is the focus of the work I have created with the Havasupai’s help.”

“Guardians of the Grand Canyon” is presented in four sections: Celebration of the Animals, Mourning the Rams, The Awakening and Ram Dance & Return of the Animals.

The piece was commissioned by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts as part of Continental Harmony.

The July 3 performance of “The Tramp and the Roughrider” tells the historic meeting between John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, who swapped stories in May 1903 while at Yosemite.

Over the years, the pair debated issues like wilderness, hunting and forest management. The professional actors and historians in this performance have more than 50 years of combined stage experience.

Stars are Lee Stetson as Muir and Doug Brennan at Roosevelt. It will be performed for the one night only.

Tickets for “The Tramp and the Roughrider” cost $10 for adults and $5 for children. Tickets to “Guardians of the Grand Canyon” are $18 for adults and $8 for children.

Call 638-9215 or 1-800-997-8285 for tickets or program details.


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