A vivid experience in nature formed the inspiration for Tumblebird Contrails, a work for orchestra composed in 2014 by American composer Gabriella Smith (b. 1991).
In her program note Smith writes,
Tumblebird Contrails is inspired by a single moment I experienced while backpacking in Point Reyes, sitting in the sand at the edge of the ocean, listening to the hallucinatory sounds of the Pacific (the keening gulls, pounding surf, rush of approaching waves, sizzle of sand and sea foam in receding tides), the constant ebb and flow of pitch to pitchless, tune to texture, grooving to free-flowing, watching a pair of ravens playing in the wind, rolling, swooping, diving, soaring — imagining the ecstasy of wind in the wings—jet trails painting never-ending streaks across the sky. The title, Tumblebird Contrails, is a Kerouac-inspired, nonsense phrase I invented to evoke the sound and feeling of the piece.
Tumblebird Contrails was commissioned by the Pacific Harmony Foundation for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, where it premiered in 2014, conducted by Marin Alsop.
Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Gabriella Smith composed her first piece at age 8 and began studies with John Adams at 15. Her musical education continued at the Curtis Institute of Music and at Princeton University. Smith’s other passion is biology, ecology, and conservation. As a teenager, she spent five years volunteering on a songbird research project. She is also fascinated with the sounds of life underwater amid choral reefs, which she records with the use of a hydrophone. While Beethoven and Mahler drew inspiration from long walks in nature, Gabriella Smith backpacks into the American wilderness, occasionally venturing alone into the Sierra Mountains for 16 days at a time.
Tumblebird Contrails expands the orchestra’s tonal palette with the swishing sounds of bows swept across the strings from bridge to fingerboard. The gradually shifting sonic collage inhabits a world similar to John Adams’ 1979 Common Tones in Simple Time. At times, a pulsating groove emerges. The music is at once majestic and terrifying.
This performance of Tumblebird Contrails, recorded at the 2023 Nobel Prize Concert, features Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. You can watch the entire concert here. In a previous post, we explored Smith’s string quartet work, Carrot Revolution.
Featured Image: Gabriella Smith in the Calanques