Nancy Ives
Composer: "Pando" and "Quaking Giant"
2024-2025 Artist In Residence
Retrospective Essay
Quaking Giant is my second piece about Pando, and likely not my last. This is a rich subject for artistic exploration, as the fascinating work of previous Friends of Pando Artists in Residence clearly shows. The first was written for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony in Portland, OR, named simply Pando, and premiered in March 2024. I first heard of Pando thanks to Jeff Rice’s appearance on Science Friday and then learned a great deal about it thanks to the abundant information available on the Friends of Pando website, and this acquaintance with its nature and history formed the basis of that piece. When I became a 2024-2025 Friends of Pando Artist in Residence, I had written a ten-minute orchestra piece about the idea of an enormous, 9,000+ year-old quaking aspen clone, but the residency would ensure that I would visit and experience it for myself—and I was eager to find out what musical results would follow. Quaking Giant for string quartet is the result.
In that pre-residency work for orchestra, I used sound effects to evoke the high-altitude home of Pando and, after a moment that marked its beginning thousands of years ago, layered simple rising figures across the orchestra in increasingly short sections to create a sense of the passage of time, millennia gaining speed as we fast forward to the present. Aside from that structural device, I was focused conceptually on how Pando appears to be many individuals while actually being one organism, which is such a great analogy for an orchestra.
As I prepared to visit Pando, I deliberately cleared my mind of past musings and preconceived ideas. I wanted the tree and its place to inform the music as much as possible.
Quaking Giant
A Short Film about Nancy Ives work with the Pando Tree
I visited in late September and brought a carbon fiber cello and bow with me. (These are very light and durable, and I carried them around in a bag on my back and didn’t have to worry about delicate wood. Yes, I am aware of the irony in avoiding wood while exploring a tree!) Although this was to be primarily a composing project, the cello is a central part of how I make and experience music—I started playing it when I was six years old and have played my whole adult life professionally—and I knew I wanted to interact with the soundscape of the tree in a palpable, visceral way. I assumed I would record little improvisations in harmony with the tree’s sounds that would serve as source material down the line, but it proved challenging to get recordings that came even close to representing the sounds I was hearing. (I don’t have Jeff Rice’s skills!) I knew I wouldn’t be able to write the piece right away since I had other deadlines, and I did wonder if this lack of audio documentation would be a problem later when I needed to recall the soundscape and create a reflection of my experience, but ultimately, it wasn’t a problem at all. I did dip into the voice memos and videos, and they did help, but they served more to reconnect me to my memories of the experience than as a literal source material.
Another aspect of the work I knew I would have to grapple with was what form the piece would take, particularly the question of instrumentation. I’ve written music for everything from solo cello to full orchestra, and although I thought about a variety of ensembles, it was already becoming clear while I was there that string quartet—an ensemble comprising two violins, a viola, and a cello—would be the medium for this work. Flexible and full of possibilities, the string quartet is one of the preeminent types of chamber ensemble for good reason, and it opens up the possibility of bringing the performers to the tree someday.
Over two and a half days, after receiving a thorough orientation, an emergency GPS device, and bear spray from Lance Oditt, my spouse and I traipsed around various parts of the tree and its surroundings, accompanied on one afternoon by a Pando Ambassador. Immediate discovery: Different areas of the tree have different sounds! One area, where there was a fire decades ago, has many slender ramets, creating a higher-pitched and more homogenous sound, like many players on the same instrument. Up the hill a bit, there are voids and places with fewer, larger branches (along with treacherous footing that kept me very focused!) where different layers of sound can be heard with more separation, like a wide-ranging group of diverse musical instruments. I loved how I could hear the wind approaching from distant parts of the tree, then moving over me, then on past. This is represented in the quartet by “bow swirls” on each of the instruments, a nontraditional technique that entails wiping or scraping the bow on the strings, with light pressure and in circular motion. By specifying different instruments and different strings on each instrument and instructing the players to be louder or softer, I could allude to the characteristic Quaking Aspen sound in the wind traveling along different parts of Pando.
One idea persisted from the earlier work for orchestra into Quaking Giant. The presence of an estimated 47,000 trunks (really branches and technically “ramets”) is an inescapable aspect of Pando’s physical presence—it is why this single tree is a forest in its own right and why the sounds it makes have such spectacular scope. I employed similar repeated and layered rising figures in both pieces to represent this physical reality.
I heard another sound that made a deep impression when I pressed my ear to one of the slender trunks, hearing the groaning of underground water and the wind’s impact on the root system. This interpretation of these sounds—and indeed, the impetus to seek them out—is informed by insights gained by Jeff Rice and Lance Oditt during Jeff’s residency. What I heard closely resembled a didgeridoo, but I had no plans to include that Indigenous Australian instrument in my composition. Instead, those sounds inspired the section of my quartet entitled “Rooted,” where the cello plays an extended and constantly connected soliloquy in its lowest register.
One of the surprises for me that emerged in the creative process was the movement titled “Pando Remembers the Ice Age,” which was a favorite part of the piece for many in attendance at the premiere. This was a flight of fancy, admittedly, and I don’t entirely remember where it came from. I suppose it could be a case of musical inspiration preceding thematic conception, but a musical portrait is always a dance between the conceptual and the purely musical, and I’m glad I trusted my instincts on this and included it. In creating a portrait or telling the story of another being, it is irresistible to try and see through the “eyes” of one’s subject, to inhabit its perspective. That kind of inspiration can best be found through actual experience and direct contact. Had I tried to write Quaking Giant without the residency experience, it would be very different and not as rich and varied.
From the Tree to the Forest of Imagination
Although people have long lived around Pando, it is clear that the human presence has new and different impacts in modern times. For one thing, we’ve brought our cows, which, like the native deer and elk, graze on the young aspen shoots. To depict the new occupants, I actually transcribed the moo of cows into the cello part. I included the instruction that it is fine to be so literal that the audience laughs, which I consider in keeping with a joyful celebration of Pando, but a more abstract version of that sound is also perfectly acceptable. Another way the human presence is depicted is by having the string players sing a little to bring the actual human voice into the picture. I did not want to shy away from representing the challenges the Anthropocene has brought to Pando, so there are episodes of fragmentation of the musical material, and transient crushing of the strings, an effect which involves applying excess pressure to create a scratchy, distorted sound while playing the notes.
However, the true nature of the tree is to always renew itself. This is its superpower. I think it has another superpower, which is to inspire admiration, wonder, and stewardship. While I was in residence, there was a work party of local community members there to participate in a Community Forestry Day. I was inspired by this and everything I learned about the work of Friends of Pando to end the piece with harmony between the tree and the human world, the rooted and the roaming.
Quaking Giant by Nancy Ives
As Performed by 45th Parallel Universes' Pyxis Quartet
(Used with Permission)
The total length is 12-13 minutes, and the six sections are performed without pause:
- 47,000 Dancing with the Wind
- Ramets
- Rooted
- Pando Remembers the Ice Age
- New Occupants
- Renewing Always
The kind of music composition I practice is not complete until performers bring the notes on the page to life. I’m grateful to the Pyxis Quartet of the 45th Parallel Universe for premiering the piece on January 20, 2026, at Polaris Hall in Portland, OR. I wanted this piece to serve as a compelling introduction to Pando and to the work of Friends of Pando, and I wanted hearing it to be the kind of experience that makes people want to learn more. Judging by the questions and comments after the performance, I succeeded!
About Resident Nancy Ives
Artist Statement
Pando and I haven’t met in person yet, but I have already been inspired by what I’ve learned from Friends of Pando and the work of previous Artist in Residence Jeff Rice to write a piece for orchestra named Pando, which premiered in Portland, OR in March 2024. The Metropolitan Youth Symphony had approached me about commissioning a new work, and when I asked the young musicians of the orchestra what they wanted the piece I would write for them to be about, they told me they wanted something that dealt with the environment and climate change. I began looking for a meaningful way to honor that wish without resorting to doom and gloom. Music has the power to bring people together in shared emotional experience, and I would rather use that opportunity to celebrate the beauty and resilience of nature and to galvanize enthusiasm about finding solutions to the climate crisis. I wanted to honor their generation’s love of the natural world without ignoring their concerns for the future. Creating a musical portrait of Pando fit the bill beautifully — plus, the thought of a single organism that looks like many individuals captivated me as an analogy for a symphony orchestra! The very idea that such an organism exists is awe-inspiring, and learning about it thanks to the work of Friends of Pando gave me a delightful subject for the piece.
Early notation sheets from the "Pando" by Nancy Ives
Enjoy a sample from the "Pando"" by Nancy Ives performed by The Metropolitan Youth Symphony
Another example of this approach is a piece I wrote in 2018, …black snow, dark ocean… (shown below)I started with the fact that the Arctic is warming three — now four — times faster than the rest of the planet and the ways these changes are threatening the ancient way of life of Arctic peoples, but I ultimately found key inspiration from the work some climate scientists have been doing with Inuit elders to incorporate their knowledge and experience into the science. This kind of knowledge and awareness and the accompanying emotional responses have led me in exciting musical directions, sparking new and unexpected artistic concepts.
Enjoy a performance of "...black snow, dark ocean..."
Performed by Valdine Ritchie Miskin
(Credit: Valdine Ritchie Mishkin, Nancy Ives, Third Angle New Music, 2019)
Every time I learn something more about Pando a new crop of metaphors pops-up in my imagination. For instance, the fact that Pando is constantly renewing itself evokes the nature of musical performance; for a piece of music to exist, the sounds must be generated anew each time. However, this sort of insight is still essentially abstract, while music is palpable and alive, often experienced viscerally. I expect that actually visiting Pando and experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of its presence — really taking in its size and condition, and actually exploring what sounds I can make in concert with its own sounds — will lead to a deeper level of understanding and inspiration. I’m not sure what form the resulting work will take; true collaboration requires receptivity and beginning with an open mind. Having created a brief — only 10 minutes long — portrait of Pando feels like the barest introduction to the artistic possibilities inherent in such an extraordinary subject, and I eagerly look forward to making music with Pando and seeing where this cross-kingdom collaboration will take me.
Listen to Nancy's Performance Work on Spotify
Nancy Ives Bio
Composer and cellist Nancy Ives is a musical icon, having “built a career of such spectacular diversity that no summation will do her achievements justice.” (Artslandia) As “one of Oregon’s most prominent and accomplished classical musicians,” (The Oregonian) Ives enjoys an illustrious performance career that informs her eloquent and enduring compositional style. “Modernistic but melodic and compelling… [with] a refreshing musical breadth, a diverse but integrated approach,” Ives’ music communicates “a uniquely personal voice.” (Oregon ArtsWatch) By way of an adventurous and multifaceted career – which includes more than 20 years as Principal Cellist of the Oregon Symphony, collaborations with virtually all of the region’s premier performance organizations, and a history of service within the cultural community – Ives is a gracious and essential cornerstone of musical life in the Pacific Northwest, “a local treasure,” according to the Portland Mercury.
By creating music that is deeply inspired by the natural world and is at once informal and relatable while also offering depth and complexity, Ives effortlessly captures elements of style that reflect an Oregonian approach to life. A relative of the legendary composer Charles Ives, she carries on the tradition of her ancestral namesake with modern relevance, through highly-acclaimed performances of her work given by the Portland Chamber Orchestra, Fear No Music, Friends of Rain, Portland Cello Project, Siletz Bay Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, and OBF Composers Symposium as well as broadcasts on All Classical Portland and KBBI (Alaska). Committed to creating music of consequence, Ives works with indigenous communities to authentically capture, amplify, and relay their stories to wider audiences. For example, her recent large-scale, multimedia orchestral work, Celilo Falls: We Were There, traces geologic and human history with “stunning, assiduously crafted, and mostly melodic music… a many-splendored artistic experience… universal in [its] artistic, social and political impact.” (Oregon ArtsWatch) With the help of a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Ives is completing a recording for which she commissioned six leading Oregon composers including herself to write new works inspired by the Allemandes from J. S. Bach’s Suites for solo cello.
In addition to her role as Principal Cellist of the Oregon Symphony, Ives is a member of the Palatine Trio, the Rose City Trio, and the trailblazing ensemble, Fear No Music. She has recently appeared with Chamber Music Northwest, Third Angle, Portland Piano International, the Oregon Bach Festival, Portland Cello Project, 45th Parallel Universe, and in solo concerto performance with the Oregon Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Portland Columbia Symphony, Clark College Orchestra, and Cascade Festival of Music, “demonstrating with attentive grace that technically challenging and sonically difficult music can still be beautiful.” (Oregon ArtsWatch) A regular performer in live radio broadcast on All Classical Portland’s Thursdays @ Three, she was also the “Cellist in Residence” for a year on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s arts news magazine State of Wonder.
Having received a DMA from the Manhattan School of Music, Ives thrived in New York City where she was Principal Cello and a founding member of the Grammy-nominated Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and Principal Cello of the American Chamber Opera Company. She was a regular recitalist at the Friends of the Arts Beethoven Festival and the Apollo Muses Festival in New Jersey, and in addition to performing the standard concerto repertoire with orchestras in the Northeast and the Midwest, she premiered her own composition Dialogue III for cello and orchestra with the Danbury Community Orchestra. Her rich history of new music performance includes membership in the North-South Consonance and Musicians’ Accord, through which she gave over one hundred premieres by such illustrious composers as Milton Babbitt, Chen Yi and Bruce Adolphe. Her talent and versatility led to recordings on the Opus One and Koch labels and to soundtrack recordings for PBS and the Smithsonian. Known for her venturesome approach to music-making, she appeared with Laurie Anderson and Brazilian pop star Gal Costa at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, with Nana Vasconcelos at The Knitting Factory and Merkin Hall, and recorded with rock star Lenny Kravitz. Embracing an expansive approach to her artistry, Ives combined acting with cello playing in an Off-Broadway production of Orpheus in Love by Craig Lucas, and while on tour with Phantom of the Opera, performed a comedy routine about the cello in AIDS benefits across the country.
An enthusiastic teacher and mentor, Ives is an Instructor of Chamber Music at Lewis & Clark College. As a co-founder of Classical Up Close, she provides greater community access to music, bringing intimate performance to the places where people live, work, and play. Ives serves on the Board of Directors for All Classical Portland and is a past board member of the Oregon Cello Society and the Oregon Symphony.
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