Jack Tamul, John Boehr, David Boehr, James T. Miller: Press

Sweet and Sublime, March 20, 2008
By Daniel Dropko (Vermilion, OH United States) - See all my reviews

Sometime last year, I was flying out of Miami Airport absent-mindedly gazing out the window. As the plane banked in its climb, I saw below us an amazing sight. It was as if someone had drawn a crooked line, all 90 degree angles, across the landscape. On one side were the trappings of civilization -- homes, businesses, roads -- and on the other side -- nothing. It was as though "civilization" had been gently lifted from the map, leaving an immense emptiness that stretched as far as our airborne eyes could see: the Everglades.

Of course the Glades are anything but empty. As this fascinating musical project reminds us, the Everglades are not something to be experienced from afar, like a canyon or cityscape, but up close -- intimate and personal. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that the Glades are more than just a habitat; they resemble a kind of independent, composite organism, one that breathes, eats, and lives. Or dies.

That, anyhow, is the perception that is left with the listener after hearing "Pahayokee -- a Plea for Life". It is styled a song cycle, and indeed it consists of five related "songs". But it has little in common with the familiar examples from Schubert or Schumann. To the listener it seems more like a tone poem with settings for voice. But that is a personal impression. What matters is that it is a work of great beauty, and by the end accomplishes an interesting and unique bit of magic.

It begins with ambient sound from the Everglades. But we soon realize that this is not a simple "environment" recording. John Boehr's sweet baritone sings in a musical vocabulary straight out of the twentieth century art song repertoire. This is music that claims your attention, that has something to say, and is not there to soothe the listener into a meditative state. The juxtaposition of natural sound at its purest with musical composition at its most challenging is initially jarring (but read on), as is the message. The Everglades, a creature of water, is dying for lack of it.

The middle three sections are more traditionally songlike, though still in the contemporary mode. Echoes of Copeland's art songs, and traditional spirituals are there, but the sections are not merely derivitive. Mr. Boehr is at his best in the second and fourth songs, where his warmth and tonal control are heard to great advantage. Lyrically, the cycle reaches a kind of climax in the fourth movement, "Hang on My Friend", where the Everglades become not just the subject of the song, but its object. You don't sing to a wetland. You sing to a friend.

And now for the magic. Sometime early on, the composer introduces a strict canonic repetition in the vocal parts. Since this is principally a melodic, not a harmonic, canon, we hear the parts in a linear mode, sometimes complementing, sometimes clashing harmonically. But we quickly become accustomed to it. It is then, when at the beginning of the last section the natural sounds of the Everglades are heard again, that we begin to hear the natural music, also a linear product, along with the composed. We realize that they are not so different after all, and that the initial clash of sound and style was a product of our hearing, not of the natural harmonies that were there all along. As the sound fades, the quiet simple notes of the piano become yet another voice of the Everglades. Or is it the other way around? Have the voices of the Everglades become one with ours? It's a nice experience.

This would be a dishonest review if I said I liked everything about the piece(s). There is an electronically sustained tone at the end of the first section, a kind of musical "freeze frame", that is a nice effect, but was to me a distraction given the way the entire composition played out. Later in the piece, the frantically declaimed "The Glades are dying!" text also seemed out of place. I understand it was there to forecefully make a point, but for me the point had already been eloquently made. So I originally considered four stars instead of five. But upon reflection, these are very minor quibbles (and may indeed be to another's liking), and so my recommendation remains at five.

So sit back, take your time, listen to the whole thing from beginning to end, and feel yourself transported. It's worth it. God Save the Everglades.

Serenades for the Glades: Article by Paul Weideman about Pahayokee:A Plea for Life concert in Santa Fe New Mexico on February 25.2010.


Baritone John Boehr, a Santa Fe Opera alum, performs an “environmental oratorio” on Thursday, Feb. 25. The other musicians for Pahayokee: A Plea for Life, presented by Santa Fe New Music in collaboration with the Santa Fe Art Institute, include the singer’s father, pianist David Boehr, and the birds, bugs, and other critters that inhabit the Florida Everglades. The concert benefits the Santa Fe Conservation Trust.

Flamingos in flight over the southern end of Everglades National Park; AP Photo/Florida Keys News Bureau, Andy Newman
The environmental background music was captured in field recordings by lawyer and conservationist James T. Miller, who conceived the project and wrote the libretto. The music was composed by Jack Tamul. “It’s written so ingeniously, and it’s improvisational, but it’s also about the technology,” John Boehr said in a conversation from New York. “I have this little box with letters and numbers that I press to cue different sounds. The piece is written very minimalistic. Jim Miller wanted it to be just like the Glades. The way he described it to me was as a very peaceful place, but then there are explosions of sound, like an alligator popping out to grab something.
“I took a trip there, and it’s very beautiful, but it’s also very calm. The way the wind hits the grass looks like waves. So the way this is written, some things I can say over and over again, and I can sing them in different ways, then I have the box. If I press A1, let’s say, it might be the sound of an alligator or an ibis.” There are five principal songs in the Pahayokee cycle. In between those songs, Boehr has opportunities to improvise vocally and to cue particular sounds from the field recordings or recorded segments of his father’s piano.
Boehr said that Pahayokee is his first new music/electronic music experience. He has performed with opera companies in Austin, Fairbanks, Palm Beach, Pittsburgh, and Santa Fe. He sang with the SFO as a member of its apprentice-artist program in 2006 and 2007. In 2007, he was cast as Carlo in the premiere of Trinity by Santa Fe New Music’s John Kennedy, commissioned by the SFO. Boehr recently completed work with the Austin Lyric Opera, performing the role of Tapioca in a production of Emmanuel Chabrier’s opéra bouffe L’Étoile. In April, he begins work with the New York City Opera on Handel’s Partenope.
David Boehr, who has been a member of the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra since 2004, frequently does concerts with his son. The two made a recording of Pahayokee: A Plea for Life in 2007. Tamul was music director for JTM Studios in Florida from 1976 to 2003, during which time he created music and sound for museum exhibits and the mass media.
Miller, whose writings include an article about the extinction of a Florida native, the dusky seaside sparrow, for the journal Snowy Egret, was raised near the Everglades. During the last several decades he has journeyed hundreds of times into pahayokee, which is the Seminole word for “grassy waters.” The sawgrass marshes are a chief feature of the Everglades National Park.
The Everglades, which Miller says is actually a slow-flowing river, has been under threat for many years, long before climate change was even talked about. “In south Florida, there are thousands of miles of canals and dams and levees constructed to allow development, and more than half of the Glades has been drained,” he told Pasatiempo. The idea of Pahayokee is to use art to raise consciousness about the plight of the Everglades. “We love art for art’s sake and we know that some people are against using art with a message, but we really believe in this.”
Despite devastating bird losses from the 19th-century trade in the feather plumes of herons, egrets, and other birds and from habitat
alterations, the national park (established in 1947) is a destination for bird-watchers from around the world. More than 360 avian species have been recorded in the park. Among them are the mangrove cuckoo and the nearly (or possibly) extinct ivory-billed woodpecker, the greater flamingo, the huge American white pelican, and the slightly cartoonish brown booby.
The Everglades is also home to the endangeredWest Indian manatee as well as Florida panthers, otters, the Everglades mink, five species of bats, salamanders that can grow more than 3 feet long, and the American alligator and American crocodile, both of which can grow to 15 feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds.
Many of the important animal species in the Everglades are dependent on local pine lands and on theWestern Hemisphere’s largest contiguous stand of protected mangrove forest. Both habitats are in danger of obliteration through inundation from warming sea water and melting glaciers, according to a National Park Service study called “Climate Change and South Florida’s National Parks.”
Miller’s ambient recordings of the Everglades were labors of love, but the process wasn’t exactly a breeze. “I recorded this mostly at night,” he said. “What’s so amazing is that it takes hours and hours to record something that ends up being useable for just a few minutes. And there’s so much human sound. Even though I was deep in the Everglades, and I’d go out at 4 in the morning, there would be a damn jumbo jet going over.”
Miller said he that has been frustrated with the slow pace of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, which Congress approved in 2000. “Nothing ever gets done, and the Everglades are slowly dying.”


“The Pahayokee piece is very passionate,” Boehr said. “When we did it in Philadelphia at the Electro-Music Conference, I was very surprised how much it took out of me to do it for 45 or 50 minutes. It is very intense. Jim’s passion for the Everglades, and the toll it takes on him seeing it kind of dwindle away, really comes out in this piece and especially in his libretto. Jim wanted the music to be in a place where people could see the simplicity but with this undercurrent of desperation.”