The Far View    

   The People, the Animals, the Sky and the Wind, the Rainbows and the Storms- There is no place in the whole wide world like the San Luis Valley. I find that music can fill the mind when no words can describe the beauty.

    All these pieces are derived from scenes in the San Luis Valley. It is an unique geographical area encompassing the headwaters of the Rio Grande and Great Sand Dunes National Park. It is the highest large park in the Rocky Mountains, where Spanish and Anglo setters developed a thriving farming district surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks. With the Spanish settlement, it has very rich old cultural traits not found elsewhere in the United States.

    This was recorded in the solar powered Lyftwyn Studio in the La Garita Mountains. The music was played on a Baldwin Imperial Grand Piano built in 1898 and lovingly restored by my friend Perry Penick. The piano, affectionately known as “Bull” because of the heavy, archaic action. The piano lived for years in the middle of nowhere, listened to by the deer, hummingbirds, bluebirds and coyotes.