MINDSCAPES for piano and orchestra 

A triptych by composer Billy Childs for pianist Lara Downes, inspired by the abstract landscapes of California-based Afro-Native artist Richard Mayhew. 

Composer Billy Childs responds to the paintings of legendary California-based Afro-Native artist Richard Mayhew, reflecting Mayhew’s emotional resonance and expressive intensity in a new work for piano and orchestra composed for pianist Lara Downes. 

The expressive forms of 97-year-old Santa-Cruz based artist Richard Mayhew echo trees, clouds and canyons - but they only exist in the terrain of the imagination. His African American and Native American ancestry informs his spiritual connection to the land, and poses a challenge to America’s landscape tradition and its association with a long history of white colonial expansion.. “I’m painting Forty Acres and a Mule,” Mayhew has said of his landscapes, referring to the land parcels and livestock promised but never granted to freed slaves after the Civil War. “I’m painting the treaty land that was never honored for Native Americans. My mindscapes are also about the healing of the long trauma that Black and native communities have experienced collectively. I internalize my emotional interpretation of desire, hope, fear, and love. So, instead of a landscape, it’s a mindscape.” 

LARA DOWNES

Pianist Lara Downes has been called “an explorer whose imagination is fired by bringing notice to the underrepresented and forgotten” (The Log Journal). An iconoclast and trailblazer, her dynamic work as a sought-after performer, a Billboard Chart-topping recording artist, a producer, curator, activist, and arts advocate positions her as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene. Ms. Downes’ musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating the broad landscape of American music to create a series of acclaimed performance and recording projects that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience.

Lara’s close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Adolphus Hailstork, Carlos Simon, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Billy Childs, Quinn Mason, Paola Prestini, Timo Andres, Teddy Abrams, Clarice Assad, and many others.

BILLY CHILDS

Billy Childs is one of the foremost American composers of his era, successfully marrying the musical products of his heritage with the Western neoclassical traditions of the twentieth century in a powerful symbiosis of style, range, and dynamism. His creative collaboration with Downes leans into her own broad vision for mining the legacies of history, family, and collective memory to excavate and expand the broad landscape of American music.