Postcards from Alaska
Notes from the Composer, Bill Klemm
In 1991, after finishing my tour of duty with the Marine Corps as a musician, I experienced an enormous sense of grief without music in my life. I have a very vivid memory of being alone while listening to the glorious final movement of “Pictures at an Exhibition.” I found myself sobbing with a sense that I was not on the right path in my life. It was the moment I decided to pursue a degree in music and I have since felt indebted to that work which became the model for Postcards.
My family has a connection to Alaska since before its statehood. My great aunt, Betty Klemm, was an accomplished soprano having performed with the Met among other notable achievements. She lived in Alaska for a time and sang at the statehood celebration before settling with her husband in Arkansas. Her stories about Alaska and its beauty filled my young father with a life-long fascination with The Last Frontier.
Upon my first visit to Alaska in the summer of 2017, I stood overlooking the fjords of Turnagain Arm absolutely gobsmacked by the magnificent beauty. I called my father and told him it was better than any words could describe. I remember saying, “Why don’t I already live here?” Within 6 months, I was living here and sending my father photos of everything.
In the fall of 2022, I made a trip back to Texas to see my father who had been hospitalized with COVID. He was weakened and frail. I realized he would never make the trip to Alaska as we both hoped. Dad’s vision was also deteriorating making it difficult to share the photos I was taking for him.
On the long flight back to Anchorage, I thought about my father and one of the best moments in our relationship was at the end of my composition recital. He was a stoic man—typical of his generation—but he was wet around the eyes with a lump in his throat. Dad encouraged me to have a solid day job with IT work but I realized the work I did as a composer was what really moved him.
Since that recital in December 1999, the number of works composed could be counted on one hand—without the thumb. However, after returning to my new home in Alaska, I felt a renewed sense of purpose to compose a few bits that would be the soundtrack of Alaska that I could share with my dad.
The first fruits of this project were a few miniatures for orchestra that began to coalesce around the notion of “sonic postcards” and came together as a collection of 4 or 5 short movements. Feeling somewhat confident in my composition renaissance, I approached the Anchorage Symphony about the possibility of reading them. The music director said two things that composers love to hear. She said, “I like your music and I think audiences will, too” and “can you do more?” This was very encouraging to me and helped me fight through the nagging imposter syndrome to work on this piece and other new works.
On October 10, 2023, my father passed away and I set this work aside feeling it had lost its purpose as I pivoted towards other projects while I grieved. The following year, the ASO music director said she wanted to program Postcards for the next concert season (2025-2026). I began to edit and organize my initial sketches into its final form. As it would turn out, the other work on the program was Pictures at an Exhibition. Kismet.
I. Fanfare for the Last Frontier
The first movement, “Fanfare for the Last Frontier” is about experiencing the absolute enormity of Alaska’s scale and beauty. There is a bit of super-sized cinematic flare and Copland-esque Americana to convey the scale and frontier scenery.
II. Winter Sunrise
Winter in Alaska is long. There is snow and ice from October to April but the pale and fleeting sun of solstice is something special. “Winter Sunrise” is about the anticipation of the sun peeking up over the Chugach Mountains after a long twilight-ish sunrise illuminating the landscape with a kaleidoscope of color. The winter sun has a short but glorious appearance as it arcs low across the sky sinking below the peaks of the Alaska and Aleutian Range.
III. Snowfall
One of my favorite things about Alaska is watching it snow. I love to sit near a big window looking out at silver dollar-sized flakes gently falling to blanket the landscape. Gazing into the snowfall, you can see various layers going this way and that represented by the counterpoint in the voices.
IV. Moose Gallup
“Moose Gallup” is about how absolutely ridiculous the moose is. An adult moose is bigger than a Clydesdale horse and you cannot truly appreciate their size until you are near one—which is where you do not want to be. Moose are cantankerous beasts who can kill a bear with a kick. Their babies are adorably disproportioned with long legs and a small head. To see a cow and calf trot is at once humorous and ominous.
V. Northern Lights
The “Northern Lights” are an incredible phenomenon to witness and Lady Aurora is never the same twice. On a clear cold winter night, the ground is covered with glistening snow that refracts the dancing aurora’s green light. Behind the glowing curtains of light is the sparkle of a billion stars in the seemingly eternal night sky. The glow undulates and sways with pulsating intensity. Science explains the charged particles and magnetosphere but words fall short of describing the wonder and awe.
VI. Deep Freeze
“Deep Freeze” captures both the literal subzero stillness of winter and the metaphorical stillness in grief. This movement, composed a few months after my father’s passing, is an elegy without words. The intimate string quartet is joined by their respective sections much like a chorus in a Greek tragedy.
VII. Raven Dance
Ravens are amazing and intelligent birds. They are revered by indigenous peoples and appear in their folklore as tricksters because of their cunning. They also have a call and vocalization vocabulary that is unique to their respective family groups. One day, while shoveling snow, a single raven perched nearby began to make alien-like noises. After a short while, those calls grew as more ravens joined seemingly speaking this alien language to one another. It was quite musical. At some point, a juvenile bald eagle entered the scene. Eagles are notorious nest raiders and the ravens will gang up on them to chase them away with a cacophonous ruckus. The eagle’s territorial warble is heard in the flutes and xylophone.
VIII. Fat Bear
Both black and brown bears try to maximize their calories between long winter hibernations. Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park and Reserve is famous for their “Fat Bear” contest where viewers watch big brown bears over webcams and vote for their favorite to advance in the bracket. The sight of a roly-poly bear waddling into the river is humorous so it is easy to forget that they are still powerful murder machines. A reminder happened not long ago when one bear killed and ate another on camera. Taking note of this apparent clown/killer duality, I characterized the bear with the loping, waddling solo in the contrabassoon and their terrible claws clacking on the rocks as the strings use the wood of their bows.
X. The Lord of the Fjords
The Lords of the Fjords are most certainly the cetaceans. Between May and September, the south central and southeast coast of Alaska will be full of a variety of whales such as humpbacks, fin whales, orca, and grey whales feeding on the rich schools of herring and krill. One of my favorite destinations is Resurrection Bay and Kenai Fjords National Park where a boat tour will nearly guarantee a whale sighting. A humpback whale leaping out of the water is one of the most thrilling and majestic sights to behold. Resurrection Bay is nearly a thousand feet of glacier-carved fjord. I have been on deck in anticipation of a surfacing whale to surface from the murky turquoise depths and rewarded with the sight of the impossibly enormous humpback whale lunging from the surface. Just as quickly as they appeared, with a flash of their enormous flukes, they will disappear again into the deep.