This work was commissioned in 2023 by Verdigris Ensemble, an innovative Dallas-based a cappella choral group directed by Sam Brukhman. It is a part of a larger project called Beautification, the second performance of Verdigris’ 2023-2024 season titled Regrowth, dedicated to the theme of environmental justice. The performances will take place on December 1-3, 2023 at the Dallas Contemporary Museum of Art.

In “Beautification,” Verdigris Ensemble world premieres the immersive narration of Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act as told her from her own perspective. Intertwining the native flora of Texas with the words of Johnson, Verdigris Ensemble creates a music experience that uncovers the challenges of making the Highway Beautification Act a reality, all the while displaying the ever-constant thrum of nature versus humanity. Inspired by the Dallas Contemporary’s site-specific commission of South African award-winning visual artist Bianca Bondi, Verdigris Ensemble curates world premieres by several local and regional composers to create a new staged experience paying homage to the beauty of Texas and its unique flora.

In this composition, I set Lady Bird Johnson’s own words recorded in her diary on January 27, 1965: “Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool. All the threads are interwoven -- recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks -- national, state and local. It is hard to hitch the conversation into one straight line, because everything leads to something else.” I juxtaposed her words with Latin and English names for many of the native Texas bluestem grass varieties. I chose bluestem grasses because of their importance for native ecosystems and their extensive root systems, which to me illustrated the central message of Lady Bird’s journal entry--that of interconnectedness.