Origin Story

for orchestra (2019)

Our origin story has been told in many versions over millennia and continues to be told, with new threads being added to its vast tapestry even today. The movements of this piece draw inspiration from the richness and interconnectedness of our story, as well as our common fate.

I. Mud Men

Prometheus shaped man out of mud and Athena breathed life into his clay figure. The Māori god of the forest, Tāne Mahuta, created the first woman out of clay and breathed life into her. In Genesis 2:7, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Our humble origins as ordinary matter— clay, dust, and mud— contrasts with the extraordinary manner by which breath animated us into living beings. In a particularly dramatic telling of this transformation, the supreme god of the West African Yoruba culture, Olodumare, sent one of his divinities, Obatala, to shape the Earth and its people. From handfuls of mud Obatala began to mold figurines. Meanwhile, Olodumare gathered the gasses from the far reaches of space and sparked an explosion. The fireball dried much of the inhospitable swampland and simultaneously began to bake the motionless figurines. It was at this point that Olodumare released the breath of life to blow across the land, and the figurines slowly came into being as the first people.