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Music and nature, it seems, are two peas in a pod. For centuries, musicians have been inspired by nature, from the majestic mountains to the soft bloom of flowers. Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy and Amy Beach are famously noted for their evocative depictions of nature and how nature fueled their creative process, but the allure hasn’t dimmed with modern composers, either.
Now that summer has fully taken hold, you can enjoy nature-inspired music from these Kansas City area musicians.
American Wild Ensemble
Currently based in Springfield, Missouri, American Wild Ensemble performs around the region and the county, with programs that explore naturalistic themes like native plants, bird migration, and ecology, as well as place, history, pioneering women, and literature. The ensemble started with performances in National Parks across the country and continue to find imaginative ways to bring contemporary chamber music to unexpected places. They’ve performed in parks and venues around Kansas City, notably during their Missouri 200 program.
They’ve collaborated with many local and regional composers, like Ingrid Stölzel and Marcus Lewis. With composer Stefan Freund, at the University of Missouri, they premiered “Wild Revival” for Missouri 200 and created a new work for The Rabbit hOle in 2024. This June, AWE performs at UMKC Conservatory’s Composition Symposium.
Zhou Long
Like musicians, poets are swayed by the beauty in nature, and composers often explore these dual influences. Zhou Long, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and UMKC Conservatory composition professor, used traditional songs based on nature-influenced poetry in “A Set of Chinese Folk Songs” for string quartet, recently performed by newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. The eight songs are taken from a variety of styles and time periods, such as “The Flowing Stream,” “When Will the Acacia Bloom?” and “A Single Bamboo Can Easily Bend.”
Paul Rudy
Perhaps one of the more famous (or infamous) pieces by composer John Cage is “Child of Tree,” written in 1973 for spiny cactus, Poinciana tree pod and assorted plant matter or plant material-based instruments. Inspired, UMKC Conservatory professor Paul Rudy wrote “Degrees of Separation: Grandchild of Tree” in 1999. He discussed this piece and his compositional practice with Classical KC in in 2021.
Rudy has a deep connection with nature, something he extends both at home on his farm and across the world. In 2023, Rudy and other UMKC Conservatory composers participated in the program “Composing the Wilderness” in Alaska. Inspired by the landscape of the tundra, he created “Mountains Rising Everywhere” and “Into My Wilderness.”
The Wires
The Wires string duo—cellist Sascha Groschang and violinist Laurel Parks—often draw on images and experiences with nature in their compositions. They channelled chaotic mesmerization in their album “Wilder,” particularly in the tune “Tree of Tule,” inspired by the famous tree in Mexico with the stoutest trunk in the world, estimated to be thousands of years old.
New Morse Code
New Morse Code is the duo of University of Kansas professor cellist Hannah Collins and percussionist Michael Compitello. They collaborated with composer Christpher Stark, based in St. Louis at Washington University, on the 2024 album release “The Language of Landscapes,” which fuses cello, percussion and electronics.
“The Language of Landscape” explores humanity’s relationship with nature. From the album notes: “We have arrived at an era of human history in which our relationship with nature is critical, and likely calamitous, and this work is ultimately an attempt to illuminate the importance of the geographies of our existence and how they shape our musical spirit.”
But there’s more. New Morse Code recorded an arrangement of Viet Cuong’s “Next Week’s Trees,” originally written for string orchestra, inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem “Walking to Oak-Head Pond and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks.”
More music & nature
Just as composers bring nature into music, performers take the music back out into the natural world. Bach Aria Soloists host an annual concert in the park along with select outdoor appearances, including The Nelson-Atkins of Art. The Kansas City Symphony’s Mobile Music Box series shares chamber music in parks and plazas around the city. And it’s the last year for Symphony in the Flint Hills, a celebration of symphonic music and prairie landscape.
Summer is a great time to explore classical music and nature at the same time. Enjoy!
