Cimarron (in progress)
for percussion quartet
PROGRAM NOTE:
My old man once told me about a seismic job that took him across the Cimarron River. After scouting a safe crossing and driving his rigs through the water, he noticed a weathered historical marker: the Chisholm Trail had forded the river at that very spot.
Every one of his great-grandfathers had been a cowboy on that trail, driving cattle north, far from home. Same river, same crossing, same kind of work that keeps a man away from his people.
I keep returning to that image — my father, pausing on the riverbank, realizing he had unknowingly retraced the steps of his own blood. A reminder that the past lingers beneath the surface, and that perhaps the world hasn’t changed as much as we like to believe it has.
— Cody Criswell-Badillo