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57 Buzzards (2018)

from Why Women Went West

for Deep Listening Ensemble

57 Buzzards is included in the A Year of Deep Listening, available on MIT Press (2025).

57 BUZZARDS, by Pamela Madsen

Fifty-seven buzzards, one on each of fifty-seven fence posts at the rancho El Tejon, on a mirage-breeding September morning, sat solemnly while the white tilted travelers’ vans lumbered down the Canada de los Uvas. After three hours they had only clapped their wings, or exchanged posts. The season’s end in the vast dim valley of the San Joaquin is palpitatingly hot, and the air breathes like cotton wool. Through it all the buzzards sit on the fences and low hummocks, with wings spread fanwise for air. There is no end to them, and they smell to heaven. Their heads droop, and all their communication is a rare, horrid croak. [The Land of Little Rain by Mary Hunter Austin (1903)]

57 Buzzards: Water Trails of the Ceriso is from my opera Why Women Went West about the life of American pioneer, mystic and author, Mary Hunter Austin and her book The Land of Little Rain (1903). This work explores the 20th century fascination for utopian salvation in California, the need for water and the meaning of rain. In these works the sounds of water and fluidity of performance of the duo in Water Trails of the Ceriso are juxtaposed against the dry, rigid, inactive silence and scarcity of sound of the desert landscape of 57 Buzzards.

You may reach out to Pamela for PDFs of the Textual Score. You are welcome to perform the work without purchasing the score, please just let us know if you schedule a performance by contacting Pamela.