GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE — Music and the American landscape are an inescapable combination. “Appalachian Spring” by Aaron Copland, the “Grand Canyon Suite” by Ferde Grofe and, of course, the official Colorado state song “Rocky Mountain High,” by John Denver. Our landscapes are so amazing, Colorado has two state songs, the first, “Where the Columbines Grow” by A. J. Fynn.

Texas-based composer Stephen Lias has been working with the National Park Service for about 15 years to “create a body of music inspired by the history, geography, wildlife, scenery, and people of America’s national parks.” Lias has been composing for several decades.“In about 2010, I combined my interest in chamber and concert music with my interest in outdoor pursuits and the logical place to do that is in national parks,” said Lias. His outdoor interests include hiking, backpacking, photography and kayaking.

“Over the past seven or eight years, no composer has been more synonymous with our national parks than Stephen Lias,” stated Fred Child, Performance Today.

Indeed, Lias has composed works for many national parks including Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, Sequoia, Big Bend, Mount Rainier, Denali, and Mesa Verde to name just some of the parks he has composed about.

After composing works for Big Bend and Sequoia National Parks, Lias said he realized that many parks have Artist in Residence programs. “I started applying to the program and, at that time, I was a novelty because many of the parks had never had a composer apply to the program, which was a nice surprise to me, but I was supplying a niche in the creative arts community where I was doing something that other people weren’t doing. I was very fortunate to get selected as an Artist in Residence at Rocky Mountain National Park, and then at Denali, Glacier, and Gates of the Arctic.

“The list of parks increased and included some of the crown jewel national parks. With those parks in particular, it seemed appropriate to write larger, more epic symphonic works that really capture some of the grandeur of those places.”

Soon after, Lias said he established a “rather fruitful,” relationship with Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra Music Director Michael Butterman and composed his work, “All the Songs That Nature Sings” about Rocky Mountain National Park. Lias said he then approached former Great Sand Dunes Superintendent Pam Rice about composing a piece about the park and continued that process with current park Superintendent Andrea Compton, who were both supportive of the idea.  “I immediately approached Michael Butteman and said, ‘How would you like another orchestral piece about another Colorado national park? That worked.

“The park was very generous and let me stay in employee housing for about 10 days. I began composting [last summer] and it is on the Boulder Philharmonic schedule to premier on Jan. 12, 2025.”

When asked if the American composers Aaron Copland and Ferde Grofé influenced his composing style, Lias responded , “Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, yes. When I was an 11-year-old boy, ‘Star Wars’ came out, for the first time in my life, the idea of orchestras as a thing exploded into my consciousness was when I listened to the ‘Star Wars’ soundtrack. Wow, John Williams remains an influence on my concert style.

“You can’t be an American composer writing about the outdoors and not deal with the legacy and shadow that Aaron Copland casts over that whole discipline. His music is so marvelous and evocative. The piece I wrote about Glacier National Park called, ‘Crown of the Continent,’ is very overtly influenced by Aaron Copland. It's hard to write about horses, trains and mountains without capturing some of that same Americana epic sound that he creates in his music.”

Lias said that he is currently composing “Wind, Water, Sand” about Great Sand Dunes and does not have other composers influencing the work while he is in the process of composing. “My head is too much in the weeds for me to zoom out and see the forest. It is very possible after I finish, I may have a clearer sense it is part some compositional linage. Right now, I’m capturing the ideas that musically fit the thematic direction I want to go with the piece.”

Regarding the creative process he employs in composing and while he was at Great Sand Dunes Lias said, “My general philosophy is not to compose a lot while I am at the place, I would much rather have a really immersive experience with the place which I can only have there. I can compose music anywhere. My tendency is to wait and compose afterwards so that I can devote my full attention to letting the place reveal itself to me.

“When I’m working in partnership with the park as I did at Great Sand Dunes, that often affords even more exciting ways of emerging myself, they [park service] were able to send me out for a half a day with a park geologist so I learned a great deal. They allowed my access to the marvelous, marvelous museum of artifacts they have there. I had those very unique experiences. I try to get out of my comfort zone and get immersed.

“I tended to alternate my time between days on the dunes and days up in the mountains. The mountain landscape is so beautiful I didn’t want to overlook it. I also spent some very long days hiking deep into the dunes, much deeper than I had been on previous visits. Because I was there in the park, I had the opportunity to climb dunes at midnight and look at the stars in that dark sky environment. I was also there at the peak surge flows of the creek and all of that definitely influenced my ideas for what the piece would be. While I was there I wanted to sink my teeth into the place or let it sink its teeth into me.

“The piece is titled, ‘Wind, Water, Sand.’ It is not programmatic in that it is not trying to tell a specific story, and [it is] not a musical theme that represents wind and a theme that represents water, etcetera. What I was struck with when I was there is that if you could freeze the water flowing, it would be the same shape as the sand dunes. If you could fast forward the sand blowing through the air, and the shape of the dunes, it would look like flowing water. If you could see the wind, the eddies and currents of the wind in the air, and slow them down, and speed them up, they would be a perfect analog to what we are seeing very quickly in the water and very slowly in the sand at different scales.

“That relationship between the movement of wind and water and sand and the fact that the wind and the water are primarily what is moving that sand through that place — those interrelationships are what fascinated me most after spending a week there. That is the idea I wanted to capture in very broad philosophical sense, the interrelated but very similar elements flowing at different speeds and interacting with one another.”

Fred Bunch with Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve said this, “I was able to spend some time with him here at the dunes, and I am impressed by his creativity. National Parks and the Great Sand Dunes in particular serve as areas of inspiration where ‘nature bats last,’ and humans are given the opportunity to experience the natural quiet, the power of wind and water, and the awe-inspiring dark night sky. These special, protected places are areas where people can go for recreation, rejuvenation, and invigoration.”

Currently, Lias, who is a professor of Composition at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, is working on the piece, the world premiere of which the Boulder Philharmonic will perform live on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025, at 4 p.m. For tickets, see www.boulderphil.org.