Erutan -- Raindancer

Hello everyone!

I happened to rediscover the artist Erutan today, so I thought I would share, as I thought it was good inspiration for our performance.  Erutan's style and instrumentation, for me, brings out strong imagery of forests, rivers and beautiful scenes of nature, in a way in which each element of nature, even water, is alive.  Perhaps this style is too much for our performance, but I figured it would stretch our minds a bit for ways to portray nature in music.

If you haven't heard Erutan, I recommend listening to the album "Raindancer" to get a sense of her music.  Even the pieces in this album that aren't directly about nature, such as "No One But You," are still very nature-driven, portraying scenes of complete serenity.  If you don't have time to listen to the full album, I suggest listening to the songs "The Willow Maid," "Winter Moon," "Song of Joy," and "Raindancer."

"The Willow Maid" is really a story told through the music. If our performance ends up being story-driven, this could be inspiration for how to portray the story.  The song "Raindancer" has some recordings of birds chirping and thunder playing throughout the piece -- a very subtle mix of natural elements and instruments.  "Winter Moon" is another story-driven song, based on a Japanese myth. And "Song of Joy" I recommend because, well, I just like it!

You can listen to the pieces here for free: https://erutan.bandcamp.com/album/raindancer or on Spotify.  On the BandCamp website are short descriptions of each piece as well!