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Prayer for the Wild Things | ||||
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Studio album by Paul Winter | ||||
Released | 1994 | |||
Genre | New age | |||
Length | 68:10 | |||
Label | Living Music | |||
Producer | Paul Winter | |||
Paul Winter chronology | ||||
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Prayer for the Wild Things is an album released by Paul Winter in 1994. The album was commissioned to accompany a painting by artist Bev Doolittle, which is also titled Prayer For The Wild Things. A portion of this painting is seen on the album cover.
Paul Winter is an American saxophonist who founded the Paul Winter Consort. He has recorded more than 40 albums and won seven Grammy Awards. He has toured and recorded in 52 countries and six continents. He often records while traveling in wilderness areas, including on rafts, mules, dog sleds, horses, kayaks, sailboats, steamers, tug-boats, and Land Rovers. He performs benefit concerts for environmental and world peace organizations.
Bev Doolittle is an American artist working mainly in watercolor paints. She creates paintings of the American West that feature themes of Native American life, wild animals, horses, and landscapes.
Paul Winter created the album to depict in the listener's mind a journey through a day and night in the Northern Rockies, and based it on "a series of vignettes about the animals, with the saxophone recurring throughout as a kind of interlocutor". After choosing which animals to represent on the album, Winter chose instruments to accompany each animal that he felt represented that animal in some way. To demonstrate how all of these animals are interconnected in life, the melodies played on these instruments were written so that they could all be interwoven.
Paul traveled around the area of the Northern Rockies during the creation of this album, during which he went to a number of National Parks and played improvised duets with many of the animals in the parks. These duets were recorded, and many of them were put on the album as well.
The album won the Grammy for best new age album in 1995.
John Clark is an American jazz horn player and composer.
The French horn is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B♭ is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands. A musician who plays a French horn is known as a horn player or hornist.
The heckelphone is a musical instrument invented by Wilhelm Heckel and his sons. The idea to create the instrument was initiated by Richard Wagner, who suggested at the occasion of a visit of Wilhelm Heckel in 1879. Introduced in 1904, it is similar to the oboe but pitched an octave lower.
The calls of birds and mammals from the Rocky Mountains were used as part of the album. Animals included in the album are:
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than 4,800 kilometers (3,000 mi) from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. Located within the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are somewhat distinct from the Pacific Coast Ranges, Cascade Range, and the Sierra Nevada, which all lie farther to the west.
The elk or wapiti is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in North America and Northeast Asia. This animal should not be confused with the still larger moose to which the name "elk" applies in British English and in reference to populations in Eurasia.
The American bison or simply bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo or simply buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed North America in vast herds. Their historical range, by 9000 BCE, is described as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland that ran from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, east to the Atlantic Seaboard as far north as New York and south to Georgia and per some sources down to Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750. They became nearly extinct by a combination of commercial hunting and slaughter in the 19th century and introduction of bovine diseases from domestic cattle. With a population in excess of 60 million in the late 18th century, the species was down to 541 animals by 1889. Recovery efforts expanded in the mid-20th century, with a resurgence to roughly 31,000 animals today, largely restricted to a few national parks and reserves.
The grizzly bear is a large population of the brown bear inhabiting North America. Scientists generally do not use the name grizzly bear but call it the North American brown bear.
The recordings of animal calls along with saxophone solos were recorded at Gates of the Mountains, Glacier National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.
Glacier National Park is an American national park located in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1 million acres (4,000 km2) and includes parts of two mountain ranges, over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem," a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles (41,000 km2).
Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular features. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.
The Saint Louis Zoological Park, commonly known as the Saint Louis Zoo, is in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri. It is recognized as a leading zoo in animal management, research, conservation, and education. The zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). Admission is free based on a public subsidy from a cultural tax district, the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District (ZMD); fees are charged for some special attractions. A special feature is the 2 ft narrow gauge Emerson Zooline Railroad with passenger trains pulled by Chance Rides C.P. Huntington locomotives that encircle the zoo, stopping at the more popular attractions.
Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park and was established in 1885. Located in the Rocky Mountains, 110–180 kilometres (68–112 mi) west of Calgary in the province of Alberta, Banff encompasses 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 sq mi) of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine landscapes. The Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise, connecting to Jasper National Park in the north. Provincial forests and Yoho National Park are neighbours to the west, while Kootenay National Park is located to the south and Kananaskis Country to the southeast. The main commercial centre of the park is the town of Banff, in the Bow River valley.
The Paul Winter Consort is an American musical group, led by soprano saxophonist Paul Winter. Founded in 1967, the group mixes elements of jazz, classical music, world music, and the sounds of animals and nature. They are often classified as "new age" or "ecological jazz", and their musical style is often called "Earth Music". The group has had many lineup changes since it was founded. Long-standing members currently in the group include Paul Winter, cellist Eugene Friesen, bassist Eliot Wadiopan, jazz oboist Paul McCandless, and percussionist and frame drum specialist Glen Velez. Past members who were part of the group for a considerable length of time include Paul Halley, Susan Osborn, Oscar Castro-Neves, Russ Landau, David Darling, Jim Scott, Dorothy Papadakos, and Rhonda Larson.
William A. Switzer Provincial Park is a provincial park in Alberta, Canada.
Christopher "Chris" Taylor is an American multi-instrumentalist and record producer. He is best known as the bass guitarist, backing vocalist and producer of the Brooklyn-based indie rock band Grizzly Bear, with whom he has recorded four studio albums. Taylor also records solo material under the moniker CANT, releasing his debut album, Dreams Come True, in 2011.
When Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, gray wolf populations were already in decline in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The creation of the national park did not provide protection for wolves or other predators, and government predator control programs in the first decades of the 1900s essentially helped eliminate the gray wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. After that time, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed that sustainable wolf populations had been extirpated and were absent from Yellowstone during the mid-1900s.
The Alberta Mountain forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of Canada.
The ecology of the Rocky Mountains is diverse due to the effects of a variety of environmental factors. The Rocky Mountains are the major mountain range in western North America, running from the far north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the southwestern United States, climbing from the Great Plains at or below 1,800 feet (550 m) to peaks of over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). Temperature and rainfall varies greatly also and thus the Rockies are home to a mixture of habitats including the alpine, subalpine and boreal habitats of the Northern Rocky Mountains in British Columbia and Alberta, the coniferous forests of Montana and Idaho, the wetlands and prairie where the Rockies meet the plains, a different mix of conifers on the Yellowstone Plateau in Wyoming and in the high Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico, and finally the alpine tundra of the highest elevations.
Missa Gaia/Earth Mass is an album released by Paul Winter in 1982 for Living Music. He co-wrote the mass with Paul Halley, Jim Scott, Oscar Castro-Neves, and Kim Oler. The title stems from two languages, Latin and Greek. The Earth Mass was one of the first contributions made by Paul Winter when he and his Paul Winter Consort became the artists in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The mass includes the usual text, such as the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei, and also other text, hymns, and instrumental pieces. The mass is an environmental liturgy of contemporary music. It features the instrumentation of the Paul Winter Consort along with a choir, vocal soloists, and the calls of wolves, whales, and many other animals that are woven into the pieces, sometimes used as the melody.
Canyon is an album released in 1985 by Paul Winter, featuring his Paul Winter Consort. It was recorded in a small side canyon located in the Grand Canyon, which the members of the Consort nicknamed Bach's canyon, due to its 7-second reverberation, which made a perfect place to record music. The original idea of playing music in the canyon began when Winter played his saxophone while standing on the edge of the canyon, and felt that the long echoes coming back from the canyon almost seemed like the Earth was responding back to him.
Wintersong is an album released in 1986 by Paul Winter, featuring the Paul Winter Consort. The album is a collection of lesser known folk melodies from North America and Europe, arranged in a mixed style of jazz and classical, and played with Brazilian rhythms.
Earth: Voices of a Planet is an album released by Paul Winter in 1990. The album was a commissioned for the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, and was premiered in Times Square by the Paul Winter Consort and special guests. The album is a tribute to the Earth, and features at least one instrument or voice from every continent. The album also features animal calls woven into the music. In particular, recordings of elephant basso-rumbles are used. These sounds, created by elephants, are too low for the human ear to detect on its own, and their existence was unknown until shortly before the album was created.
Solstice Live! is a live album released by Paul Winter in 1993. The album is a recording of a performance of Paul Winter's annual Winter Solstice Celebration, which takes place in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The concert is a contemporary celebration of the longest night of the year, and the return of the sun. It features contemporary symbols for various parts of the celebration created by Winter. These symbols are both an artistic visual representation of something as well as a musical instrument played on during the performance. These symbols include the Sun Gong, a giant gong that is hit with yellow and red light, and risen 100 feet to the top of the cathedral ceiling, along with its player. Another is the Solstice Tree, a large sculpture of an evergreen tree, upon which is hung various cymbals, bells, chimes and gongs. The performance always features the Paul Winter Consort, and special guest musicians that Paul Winter has met or collaborated with, making it a celebration of the world's people and their music.
Crestone is an album by Paul Winter Consort, released in 2007 through the record label Living Music. The album is named after the community of Crestone, Colorado. The album was recorded in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Great Sand Dunes, and the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, all of which are located near Crestone. In 2008, the album earned the group a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
Miho: Journey to the Mountain is an album by Paul Winter Consort, released in 2010 through the record label Living Music. The album was commissioned by the Miho Museum in Kyoto, Japan to be a musical celebration of the museum. The museum is a unique piece of architecture, built on the top of a mountain, and partially tunneling into it, giving the experience of the museum being part of the Earth. The album was recorded in the corridors of the museum, which are naturally reverberant. In 2011, the album earned the group a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
Spanish Angel is a live album by Paul Winter Consort, released in 1993 through the record label Living Music. In 1994, the album earned the group a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
The White Goat Wilderness Area is a provincially designated wilderness area in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta. It was established in 1961 and it, as one of the three wilderness areas of Alberta, has the strictest form of government protection available in Canada. All development is forbidden and only travel by foot is permitted. Hunting and fishing are not allowed. The other two wilderness areas are Ghost River Wilderness Area and Siffleur Wilderness Area and together the three areas total 249,548.80 acres (100,988.82 ha).
The Siffleur Wilderness Area is a provincially designated wilderness area in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta. It was established in 1961 and it, as one of the three wilderness areas of Alberta, has the strictest form of government protection available in Canada. All development is forbidden and only travel by foot is permitted. Hunting and fishing are not allowed. The other two wilderness areas are White Goat Wilderness Area and Ghost River Wilderness Area and together the three areas total 249,548.80 acres (100,988.82 ha).