Keepers of the Earth (2020)

for Solo Piano

Inspired by Keepers of the Earth by Joseph Bruchac and Michael J. Caduto

I. The World on Turtle’s Back

II. Loo-Wit – the Fire Keeper

III. Spring Defeats Winter

IV. How Fisher Went to the Skyland

V. How Grandmother Spider Stole the Sun

VI. The Hero Twins and the Swallower of Clouds

VII. How Coyote Was the Moon

VIII. How Turtle Flew South for the Winter

IX. The Origin of Death

X. The White Buffalo Calf Woman and the Sacred Pipe

This piece is one I had been thinking about writing for many years before I started, and then it took me nearly 5 years to finish once I began. My idea was to take some of the stories from “Keepers of the Earth,” a collection of Native American stories aimed at children that I grew up with, and write a series of miniature piano pieces inspired by those stories.

The arrangement and number of pieces changed several times over the course of planning and composing, but I eventually settled on ten stories, and tried to arrange them to take a journey through both the cycle of the seasons, and also the cycle of life.

If you would like to follow along with the stories and have not been able to buy or find a copy of the book, you can borrow it online here.

And for a taste of the inspiration, here is author and storyteller Joseph Bruchac telling the story “How Turtle Flew South for the Winter”