This was the second project I did for Ernie Lyons (see The Spirit of Muskoka). He contracted this CD with the wildlife organization Ducks Unlimited Canada and called me up to do the music. The project had a rather... er, "aggressive" timeline. Put bluntly, he needed the music in about a week. The original idea was to have half of the CD be natural sounds with music, and the other half just natural sounds, so he asked me for about half an hour of music. I had absolutely no musical ideas brewing at the time, so I basically lived in the studio for nearly a week, sleeping maybe ten hours in total, trying to tweeze some decent ideas out of my brain in time to make the deadline. I wouldn't call it fun. Anyway, I came up with two pieces of music, each about fifteen minutes in length, one of which you can download and listen to on the Music page.

The results were actually better, in my estimation, than I would have expected, and the Ducks Unlimited people were quite tickled. So tickled in fact that they suddenly decided that they wanted all of the CD to have music on it. Unfortunately they didn't give us any time to actually come up with the music, they just wanted it... NOW. Well, I dug in my heels and said I'd be damned if I would go through another sleepless week to come with another half-hour of music for people who obviously had no respect for the creative process... at least that's what I think I said, anyway. I was so dead on my feet at the time I could have been reciting the alphabet for all I know. Anyhow, the bottom line is that Ernie scrounged up a piece of music called A Dream Remembered out of the Holborne archives by a guy named David Phillips (Gentle Spirit Music) and used that as the second half. It's quite a nice track, too, and David turns out to be quite a cool guy, not to mention one heck of a composer and arranger. He sent me some complimentary copies of Wetland Symphony after I lost (or lent and never got back) my only copy.

I believe CD copies of Wetland Symphony are still available through David's website. Click the above link for more information.