Canadian American Composer Sarah Bassingthwaighte Looks to Nature for Inspiration on ‘Orchestrating the Wild’

By Miranda Wilson | From the September/October 2025 issue of Strings

Orchestrating the Wild is a collection of nature-inspired works by the Canadian American composer Sarah Bassingthwaighte. Bassists will be excited to add Bassingthwaighte’s Concerto for Double Bass to their solo repertoire. Described by the composer as “more like a symphony with string bass as a hero,” it makes full use of the double bass’ range and pairs it with a rainbow of instrumental colors from the orchestra. The first movement, Lachrymae, opens with the unusual and attention-grabbing sonority of double bass and harp. As its title suggests, this movement commemorates both the composer’s and the soloist’s recent losses of loved ones. The ending expresses the loneliness and pathos of grief in a solo for bass alone. 

The opening of the second movement, Scherzo, is also for solo bass, but abruptly changes the mood to something much lighter. Rich in percussive timbres and syncopated rhythmic structures, it appears to owe some influence to jazz. After this, the finale, Presto feroce, demands more and more energetic pyrotechnics from the soloist. A dark ostinato episode in the middle threatens to disrupt the display of bravura, but the opening material returns in dramatic style to bring the concerto to a crashing conclusion. Bassist Steve Schermer handles this virtuoso material with seemingly effortless artistry.

The other three works on the album, Cape Flattery, Let There Be Sparrows, Then, and A Mountain Symphony, feature the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jonathan Pasternack and Bobby Collins. The composer’s program notes describe each melodic and timbral nuance in detail, often referring to the inspirations for sections of music. Sometimes this is another composer, as in the Buxtehude-influenced Sparrows; at other times, Bassingthwaighte’s ideas are stimulated by the poetry of Shaun O’Brien. Living as I do on the other side of the Cascade Mountains from the composer, the two-movement Mountain Symphony struck me with feelings of familiarity. Written in a cave near Spider Glacier in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, the composition depicts rivers, winds, birds, insects, trees, weather patterns, and unseen but dangerous predators that remind the listener of the vastness and unpredictability of nature. You don’t have to be familiar with this particular landscape to appreciate the composer’s depiction of it, however—the London Symphony, far away from Washington State, brings Bassingthwaighte’s music compellingly to life.