Had a concert in Taos last weekend. Robert Mirabal performed "On Taos" with the folks at Music from Angel Fire. Best collection of players I've ever had performing my music and it was incredibly satisfying. To accommodate Mirabal's flutes the piece is almost entirely modal, and I often feel guilty for this, like I'm cheating or something.... but whatever, music is music, regardless of the math behind it. What was most interesting though, was the quality of the audience. Having this piece played in Taos – a piece about Taos – makes for a really intense, intimate experience. Most the audience shares the same imagery and emotional memories of the landscape and quality of life in Taos... and so the piece seemed so much more resonant with the audience than anything else I've written... except for Shanti (which was written for a close friend and performed for her close friends). I love this quality and hope to find more ways to incorporate it into my music. I was reading the other day about Mozart's premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague, and it's just wild that at the time Prague was no bigger than Boulder... that closeness, and social tightness must have been incredible. Could you imagine someone on par with Mozart premiering an opera in Boulder? What a different world we live in today. How might we bring art music back to the community? Artists writing for their most relevant communities... I often think that as we broaden our scope in search of larger audiences, we lose the intimacy that's valuable at the fore, and all we're left with is a generalized version of ourselves as artists. But to make art-things that are tied to our direct social and environmental experiences and then perform those for our peers and community – that's magic.

On Taos - for native flute, flute, cello, and piano by PaulFowler