‘Simply put, it’s just the
idea that music can be
a powerful force for
healing. And there’s a
real need for healing in
that community over
there — and far beyond
that community, in the
country and the world.’
— Jay Bowerman
COMPOSER CHRISTOPHER THOMAS
O
n a warm, sunny Sunday
afternoon in May, hundreds
of people crammed into the
gymnasium at Burns High
School in eastern Oregon for a
concert. One estimate put the
crowd at 700. That’s roughly a
quarter of the population of this remote high-desert
town.
In Oregon’s cowboy country, people hadn’t come
out for a honky-tonk band or a rock ‘n’ roll star on tour.
Instead, the crowd of townspeople and out-of-town
visitors, white-collar workers, grocery clerks, binocu-
lar-wielding birders, government scientists and ranch-
ers had shown up for the world premiere of a brand-
new classical symphony.
“The place was filled,” says local writer Terry Keim,
who was at the concert. “It really hit a chord in the com-
munity.”
The five-movement Malheur Symphony, as the work
is titled, was composed by Christopher Thomas, a Bend
musician accustomed to having his music performed
at much larger venues. His suite Music For Strings is to
be performed in August at Australia’s Sydney Opera
House.
A frequent composer for film, Thomas has worked
with such Hollywood names as Samuel L. Jackson, Ar-
nold Schwarzenegger and Zoe Bell.
Malheur Symphony, which was played that after-
noon in Burns by the Central Oregon Symphony from
Bend, refers to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge,
which in early 2016 was the scene of a 41-day takeover
by armed right-wing extremists. The occupation of
the refuge, 30 miles south of Burns, stunned and, for
a time, divided the community. Harney County is the
kind of face-to-face place where politics quickly be-
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
comes personal.
A year after the occupation ended in gunfire, arrests
and the death of one of the occupiers, Thomas was ap-
proached by Jay Bowerman, one of three sons of Nike
co-founder Bill Bowerman and a lifelong naturalist and
supporter of environmental causes.
Could Thomas, Bowerman wondered, compose a
piece of music to honor Malheur Refuge in the wake
of the occupation? Could he produce something that
might help the fractured community reunite in the
wake of the ugliness and violence?
“The real philosophical reason for doing this was to
use music as a form of healing,” Bowerman explains.
“You know, what I don’t want to do is dredge up those
old hard feelings on either side, right? And so I guess,
simply put, it’s just the idea that music can be a power-
ful force for healing. And there’s a real need for healing
in that community over there — and far beyond that
community, in the country and the world.”
Thomas signed on. The two men spent several days
together exploring the refuge and its surroundings.
They met native Paiute leaders from the Burns Paiute
Reservation, situated on the edge of town, and talked
to ranchers, scientists and other members of the larger
Harney County community.
Out on the refuge, Thomas recorded the sounds of
the wind, of thunder and of birds singing in the marshes.
Bowerman had imagined a single short piece of mu-
sic. But as they headed back to Bend on the 130-mile
desert highway connecting the two towns, the com-
poser fell silent for long stretches. Everything from
ancient geology to the traditions of the native Paiutes
to birdcalls and ranchers in cowboy hats was swarming
through his mind.
“And suddenly this beautiful architecture showed
up,” Thomas says. “And I said, ‘Oh shit, we’ve got a
symphony on our hands! It’s five movements.’” He had
never before composed a symphony. “But, you know, if
Brahms and Berlioz can do it, we can do it!”
As everyone knows who lives outside the Fox News
bubble, we live today in a time of crisis, both political
and environmental. American democracy seems a
thing of the past, pushed aside by greed, corruption
and gerrymandering at the political high end, and by
extremists with assault rifles at the bottom.
Meanwhile, as scientists are reminding us in increas-
ingly urgent reports, our planet is quickly running out
of time — no matter what breed of politicians happens
to be in charge.
As a result, an informal connection between artists
and scientists is creating what amounts to a new genre
of music. You might call it “music to heal a dying Earth.”
In Nomine Terra Calens
In Los Angeles, scientist Lucy Jones was known for
years on television as “Dr. Lucy.”
Now retired, she spent three decades as a seismol-
ogist with the U.S. Geological Survey and as a research
associate at Cal Tech. Unlike many scientists, Jones
made a point of being accessible to the news media
when reporters had questions about, say, this after-
noon’s temblor.
Once — to the delight of Southern California TV
viewers — she cradled her sleepy young son as she ap-
peared live on camera to discuss a massive earthquake
that had just struck in Joshua Tree. The L.A. Times
called her “the Beyoncé of earthquakes.”
Jones, whom I’ve known since we were in grade
school together in L.A., has also been a musician all her
life, taking up the viol — a Renaissance stringed instru-
ment with frets — when she was an undergraduate at
Brown University. Returning to music as her children
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