Fire on the Mountain , for vibraphone, marimba and piano, was commissioned in 1993 by the Philadelphia ensemble, Network for New Music. Shortly before I began to write, I dreamed I was taking a photograph of a large white horse who was lounging outside on a couch. When I looked through the camera all I could see was white, and it took me some time to realize that I was too close to the horse. This piece is about love and fire, the looking up and seeing it on the mountain, glowing and hot, and knowing this is where I need to go - into the heat of the fire, which is myself. I Hear the Mermaid Singing , for viola, cello and piano, was commissioned and premiered by Fidelio Trio in 1990.
Mermaids are a symbol of intuitive female wisdom, connection and sexual wholeness.
These are not the mermaids of literature who lure sailors to an erotic death, but the mermaids of our own deep sexual nature, who are at ease with the water, the dark depths, the unknown and the fathomless. They are natural, untamed, and their eerie songs echo in both tenderness and playfulness. It is simply the song I imagine we all sing to our children, amid the distant noise of the outside world, cradling and surrounding them with a protective love. My ideas for this work began with a poem by my sister, Eva Davidson, which is about relationships spun with fine yet ordinary durable thread. These are old relationships, wracked by time and painful distances.