About this Piece

In 2023 I was commissioned by the Soraya center—along with Gabriella Smith and Steven Mackey—to compose a work for a three-part concert honoring the imperiled great trees of California: the redwood, the sequoia, and the Joshua Tree. Each of us was given a specific tree to use as inspiration for a 15–20-minute piece; Delirium Musicum, the great 16-piece string orchestra, was the central ensemble. We all composed a work for Delirium Musicum and an adjunct ensemble of our choice—in my case, a jazz trio (piano, bass, and drums), in Gabriella’s case electronic sounds and recordings of sounds from the Joshua Tree desert, and in Mackey’s case, in combination with his electric guitar. My focus was the sequoia tree—Steven Mackey wrote about the redwood and Gabriella Smith had the Joshua Tree.

I came up with the title of my piece from watching The Lord of the Rings; when Saruman was building his evil army, he ripped out many of the beautiful trees in the forest surrounding his castle to make weapons for his Orcs. One of the Orcs commented that the trees were old; their roots ran deep. I thought this was a poetic way to describe the sequoia trees’ connection to the earth. But the sequoias’ roots actually don’t run deep; they actually spread out. While they go up to only 6 feet under the ground, they actually can spread up to 100 feet in every direction. Since they don’t have a main taproot, they gain stability by interlocking with the roots of neighboring trees, forming a dense mat that helps them withstand strong winds and floods and also allows them to share nutrients and provide collective support. So I named the piece My Roots Spread Far and Wide.

The piece is in four loosely defined sections. The first section is a pointillistically orchestrated part, meant to describe the intricate beauty of the trees. The melody for the second part is a piano melody accompanied by a cantabile ostinato pattern in the left hand. This is my depiction of the majesty of the great sequoias. Then there is an aggressive third section that includes a jazz piano solo; this section is aiming to illustrate the power and strength of the trees. The final section starts out with a dialogue between a solo cello and contrabass, enacting a conversation between two old sequoia trees. This dialogue is followed by a maestoso section that brings the piece to its conclusion.

—Billy Childs