Into the American West

We trace the classic migrant trails across the US from the Mississippi River over the Rocky Mountains and out to the Pacific Ocean, and you may recognise place names, real and imagined, from Brokeback Mountain to The Oregon Trail and Route 66. The music too evokes open spaces and independent people – from Aaron Copland’s An Outdoor Adventure to Ferde Groffe’s Grand Canyon Suite to Florence Price’s The Oak. Our readings include passages by indigenous writers from John Rollin Ridge to Louise Erdrich, as well as fiction from Amy Tan and Cormac McCarthy and poetry from Walt Whitman and Eliza Snow.
The readers are Henry Goodman and Lorelei King.

READINGS:
On the Mississippi by Hamlin Garland
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Cherokee Love Song by John Rollin Ridge
The Jump off creek by Molly Gloss
The Sister’s Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Sometimes I go about (Chippewa tribal poem)
The Virginian by Owen Wister
The Grass on the Mountain by Mary Austin
Mid-august at Sourdough Mountain Lookout by Gary Snyder
Song of the Desert by Eliza Snow
The Redwoods by Louis Simpson
Children of the Oregon Trail by Anna Rutgers Van der Loeff
Pioneers! O Pioneers! By Walt Whitman
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
When We Sold the Tent by Rhina P Espaillat
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
The Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan
Brokeback Mountain from Close Range by E Annie Proulx
The Nightwatchman by Louise Erdrich
Wounded by Percival Everett
If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert by Natalie Diaz
Field by Ben Myers

Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy