Jett Hitt’s anthem to America’s first and oldest national park, Yellowstone for Violin and Orchestra, was completed in February of 2002 and recorded a month later. Violinist Frantisek Novotny and conductor Kirk Trevor led the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in a stunning recording of Jett’s unforgettable monument to Yellowstone National Park.
The Yellowstone concerto was inspired by innumerable horseback trips through Yellowstone’s vast backcountry. It could have only been written by someone who lives Yellowstone. The composer spent 20 years guiding and outfitting in the park, offering day rides and pack trips into the remote backcountry. Visit the Outfitting Page for more information.
Yellowstone for Violin and Orchestra has been a listener favorite on radio stations. Listeners have voted it in the Top 40 multiple times (including No. 2 at WRR recently), and multiple NPR stations have used the CD as a donor gift during pledge drives.
Provided below are sound files and commentary for each of the three movements of the Yellowstone concerto. You can hear the entire work right here. At the bottom of the page are options for buying CDs and digital files.
Composer Commentary and Tracks
I. Yellowstone
Music is almost always about place for me, and this work was inspired by the most majestic place that I have ever been, Yellowstone National Park. Though not programmatic in a strict sense, its sounds and melodies reflect my time and experiences in the Park. Not all places speak to me musically, but none has ever spoken as definitively as Yellowstone.
I began the work in 1995 during the first of many visits to the Park. When I first arrived, I was so overwhelmed by what I was seeing that I associated no sound at all with the place, but after a while, I started to become aware of vague sounds and melodies. They were not clearly defined, but I understood their essence. They were made up of what I can only describe as animal cries and Indian chants, as one might expect, given Yellowstone’s inhabitants both past and present.
The conception of the piece occurred during that initial visit. It was a moment that I can only refer to as an epiphany. En route from Mammoth Hot Springs to Madison Junction, I passed through Goldengate Canyon onto Swan Lake Flat when suddenly before me loomed the most impressive sight that I have ever beheld, Electric Peak. It was nothing less than a religious experience, and at that moment, I knew that I would write this piece. I turned into a pullout and just sat there, stunned by the unfathomable beauty before me. While sitting there, I slowly became conscious of a pickup and a livestock trailer sitting in the next pullout, and a second plan began to form in my mind. I did not know exactly how, but I knew that I was going to ride a horse in the shadow of that mountain. (To understand my motivation, it might be helpful to know that I come from a long line of cowboys.)
I began the piece when I returned home, but little came to me. After making no progress for several months, I finally laid it aside and went to Kentucky to begin the course work for a doctorate. Two years would pass before I returned my full attention to the piece, and for more than a year, I did not even know that it was going to be for the violin. Originally, I had thought that it would be an orchestral tone poem. The violin had never entered my mind, and when it did, it happened in a rather ironic way.
At about this time, I had become completely enamored by Anne-Sophie Mutter’s recording of the Sibelius violin concerto. Though I had been a great fan of her recordings for more than a decade, this particular recording was in a league all its own. Coincidentally, one of my favorite places in Yellowstone, Dunraven Pass, is named for the same man as Anne-Sophie Mutter’s violin, Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, the 4th Earl of Dunraven, and this set me to thinking. The violin was really the perfect instrument to explore the sounds that I associated with Yellowstone. It would be capable of expressing Yellowstone’s most serene beauty and, at the same time, its unforgiving viciousness. So I settled on the idea of writing a violin concerto.
As fate would have it, I got a one semester job teaching at Idaho State University in the fall of 1998, some two and a half hours from Yellowstone. I spent nearly every weekend in the Park, and slowly, the piece began to materialize. Before the semester was over, I managed to write a good portion of the first movement. I also secured a job for the following summer, giving guided horseback tours in Yellowstone. I returned to Missouri during the spring and broke a two year-old filly named Jitterbug, and at the end of April, Jitter and I set out for Yellowstone. For the next five months, we made our way through more than 1,200 miles of the 2.2 million acres that is Yellowstone.
This piece is the sum of my experiences in Yellowstone National Park. It represents my deepest and most intimate thoughts and feelings about that hallowed place. I don’t know whether I have successfully communicated those thoughts and feelings, but it is my sincere hope that I have given the listener a glimpse into what is surely the Garden of Eden without the tree.
II. Dunraven
This movement was inspired by a horseback ride that my riding partner, Amanda, and I took on a cold, rainy day in August 1999. It was drizzling when we began, but the rain quickly turned to snow as we reached higher elevation. We traveled a trail that crossed the northern boundary of the Park into the Gallatin National Forest. Trails outside the Park aren’t nearly so well maintained as those within its borders, and consequently the trail that we should have taken to reenter the Park was obscured by fallen trees as we passed by. Before we realized that we had missed our trail, however, we crossed over a high pass that broke away under our horses’ feet. There was no turning back.
We rode on through the snow until eight o’clock that evening when we came upon the Buffalo patrol cabin. We were both relieved and dismayed: Relieved because we finally knew where we were, and dismayed because we knew how far we were from civilization. We immediately exploded with laughter when we saw the cabin because we had been there a few weeks before, and we had made the observation that if anyone ever needed to get in the cabin for shelter, it would just be too bad; the place is sealed up like Fort Knox, complete with bars and barbed wire. Needless to say, there was no staying there that night.
We traveled on through the night until we reached Slough Creek at about 2:30 AM. We were cold and wet and tired, and we found the ranger station empty. We both agreed that our ponies could go no further, so after unsaddling, we found a horse trailer in the parking lot and crawled in. It seemed fairly clean, but we were chilled to the bone, and there was little sleep to be had. When morning finally came, we realized that the trailer wasn’t quite as clean as we had thought. So with our dung-stained clothes, we went off in search of a ride back to our vehicle.
I chose the name of this movement in honor of Anne-Sophie Mutter and her celebrated violin, the Lord Dunraven. It was inspired, however, by a moment during that ride that I shall never forget. It is an image that is forever ingrained in my mind. At some point during the night, I looked up toward the heavens. The sky was rent in two, one half dark and foreboding and the other filled with a million stars as only the sky in the wilderness can be. Far to the south through a haze of snow, cars were streaming over Dunraven pass, their headlights fused together forming a serpentine light that was slithering down Mount Washburn. A full moon was rising in the east over Slough Creek, and there on the moon was the silhouette of Amanda, with snowflakes floating all about her.
III. Hoodoos
During my first season in Yellowstone, I worked as a wrangler at the Mammoth Hot Springs horse corrals. I chose Mammoth because of its proximity to both Electric Peak and North Yellowstone Stables, where I boarded Jitterbug. I wanted to be able to ride across Swan Lake Flat toward Electric Peak and explore the region as often as possible.
The principal obstacle between Mammoth and Swan Lake Flat is Terrace Mountain, a travertine terrace like those at Mammoth that was formed by hot springs about 63,000 years ago. Below Terrace Mountain is an area known as the Hoodoos, which was formed by fragments of the mountain as it crumbled away during the area’s many earthquakes. It is a strange and mysterious place where one is consumed by the spirit of the American Indian. There is something inexplicably spiritual about being among those giant fragments of rock, almost as if one were standing in a primordial graveyard. I am always overwhelmed by a complete sense of insignificance when I am there.
On my way from Mammoth to Swan Lake Flat, I usually took the old Howard Eaton trail. As the trail passes out of the Hoodoos, the path narrows. To the left is a sheer drop-off straight down for hundreds of feet to Goldengate Canyon, where cars look like ants scampering along the highway. The trail again widens at the summit. The first time that Jitter and I reached this point, I turned around to see where we had been, and I couldn’t breathe. To look out over the Hoodoos at Goldengate Canyon, Mount Everts, and Bunsen Peak is to know God. I could never hope to capture the feeling in music, but hopefully, I have given the listener a small impression of a horseback ride up through the Hoodoos to the top of creation.
Album Artwork
Purchase options
Direct from the Composer will usually be the cheapest route ($19.99 plus shipping) for a physical CD, and it pays the composer 100% of the profits. Payment is made through PayPal. Be sure that your mailing address is accurate in your PayPal account.
Amazon.com is no longer an option, though there remain many reviews there under two separate listings. CDbaby, who supplied Amazon, quit handling physical CDs, and Jett refuses to deal with Amazon..
Apple iTunes supposedly has the music for immediate download ($9.99), but good luck finding it. Everything at Apple Music is geared toward selling you their subscription service. If you do find it, you will then have a recording that is only MP3 quality. (Generally speaking, Bandcamp is a much better option, and it is cheaper, too.)
Bandcamp has the music for immediate download ($9.00), but the quality is the same as the CD. Bear in mind that this download is best handled on a desktop, as the files will be zipped.
In Memoriam – Dr. Charles Quinn (1958 - 2012)
D
espite the popularity of Yellowstone for Violin and Orchestra on the airwaves, Jett would wait for ten years for the work to receive a public premiere. In November 2010, an old acquaintance, Chuck Quinn, contacted Jett through Facebook. It so happened that Chuck had his own private orchestra, the Ocmulgee Symphony Orchestra, and he wanted to know what Jett had written. So Jett sent him a CD of the Yellowstone concerto. Impatience got the better of him, however, and he purchased the recording from iTunes before the CD arrived. Within three days, the world premiere of the Yellowstone concerto had been scheduled for March 3-4, 2012.
The work was premiered to a sold-out, ecstatic audience. Chuck immediately suggested taking the work on tour. About a week later, he penned the following email to Jett:
The world of orchestral music, at least in America, is in a tight spot. Their audiences are fading away and there is no one interested in replacing them. Orchestras are closing all around the country and others are reducing their seasons. After last weekend I am convinced that my original feelings about Yellowstone were correct. Jett, American orchestras need a piece like Yellowstone. People love it. I love it. Please consider us working together and taking this on the road.Jett's Eulogy for Chuck (2012)
Chuck Quinn and I became friends some 18 years ago when we were both in graduate school at LSU. When I left LSU, email wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is now, and no one had a cell phone; consequently we lost touch.
About a year and a half ago, Chuck found me on facebook. Our friendship instantly picked up where it had left off. It wasn’t long before Chuck learned of my music, and in pretty short order, he became its greatest champion. He was the first conductor to have the courage to stand up in front of an audience and say, “I believe in this music, and I will put my name on it.”
After we premiered Yellowstone for Violin and Orchestra, Chuck said to me, “I can’t be done with this music. I want to take it on tour.” And later when I asked him if he was sure that he wanted to undertake such a large and financially risky project, he bluntly said, “Jett, this is what I am supposed to do.” Alas my dear Chuck, no it wasn’t, but I thank you for the sentiment.
I am forever indebted to Chuck Quinn for his devotion to my music, but there is something far greater that he did for me. He made me write again. I had not written a note of music in ten years because no one would play my music. When Chuck learned of this, he said, “What are you nuts? What are you thinking? If you write it, I’ll play it.”
So with Chuck’s encouragement, I built a music studio and installed a concert grand piano. For the last three months I have been writing a piano concerto. I don’t know whether my future work will come to fruition, but if it does, Chuck Quinn is responsible for absolutely every note. Godspeed, My Friend.