Living with Wildfires
written by Marina López
Bahlest Eeble Readings Cycle 18 Fellow
2025 was a strange year. As the current administration returned to power, bringing previously unimaginable levels of horror to my community, a small human grew inside my belly. My identity as an artist faded into the background as the sheer need to survive, to weather the winter, took hold.
By June, when I arrived at the Gabriela Lena Frank Bahlest Eeble Reading program, I had settled somewhat into this twisted new reality. I was 23 weeks pregnant, feeling tired and heavy, about to spend 4 days engaged in deep exploration of the sounds of double reeds, percussion, and marimba.
I could not have foreseen how impactful that weekend would be in this transitory moment in my life. Beyond the good food and fun company, the beautiful redwood trees, and the nerding out over mallets, multiphonics, and extended bass drum techniques, it felt very much like release, like group therapy, like buttressing my identity, a return to self.
Gabriela will often tell the story about how GLFCAM was born out of the need to meet the political moment back in 2016. Ever since, she has become a mentor for the next generation of composers. The first day of our stay, when she first met with my cohort — Ivan Rodriguez, Sam Wu, and Aaron Levin, and I — she engaged us in an exercise were we all opened up about our self doubt, our hurt, and our hopes.
We composers are a sensitive guild. We pour ourselves into our work, navigating an environment set as a zero sum game, of oversupply of dreamers ripe for professional abuse. All in the hopes that our voice will somehow, somewhere make an impact.
There is something defiant, revolutionary, even, about putting one’s nose to the grindstone in the midst of troubled times; about asserting our right as a community of curious souls, to explore the nitty gritty world of sounds. Over the next weekend, oboeist Kyle Bruckmann, bassoonist Jamael Smith, and percussionist Chris Froh challenged us to write our weirdest, wildest music, to channel our most authentic selves through their instruments.
In my work, I strive to combine the deeply personal with a sense of curiosity and experimentation. In my piece Nieve (for pierrot + percussion, written in 2023), I combined snowflake patterns with text from interviews I conducted with Mexican immigrants in the USA; my latest orchestral piece, Moño, combines sonata form with mambo music, the cultural memory of the Mexico City of my grandparent’s youth. Emergence, the piece that resulted from my collaboration with the musicians at GLFCAM, explores the violence of creation and childbirth through experimentation with seldom used soundscapes and extended techniques.
The Gabriela Lena Frank Academy is located in Boonville CA, deep in wildfire territory, where fire preparedness is a way of life. Jeremy, Gabriela’s spouse, spends his days clearing brush and digging wells, making sure they are as prepared as possible. “I thought about leaving,” Gabriela confessed, “but this type of stuff is happening everywhere.”
She’s right. That summer, there were historic floods in Wheeling WV and in Texas, fires in Los Angeles… The year prior Asheville NC, thousands of miles from the coast, got devastated by a hurricane. There’s been Hawaii, Houston, Greece… back in 2022, more than a million people were displaced in Pakistan by floods. And it isn’t stopping.
One thing about fire preparedness is that it forces you to get to know your neighbors. To rely on each other. I’ve been thinking about fire preparedness as a metaphor for our community. We become stronger when we forge bonds with each other. When we refuse to see each other as competition, we become strong in camaraderie.
Over and over again, throughout the weekend, we were reminded of our work’s worth. It felt strange, drenched as we are in jadedness, to entertain the idea that our work can and should meet the scary, fire-ravaged moment we happen to be living through.
In Boonville, Gabriela has created a community around the joy of exploration, of making weird sounds, and the warmth genuine friendship. This joy and these bonds will be the ones that will sustain us as we navigate our changing industry and our changing world.
Marina López
Marina Lopez is a Pittsburgh-based composer, educator, and budding writer. She seeks to challenge borders between musical genres and between art forms, to create immersive experiences that challenge the listeners' preconceptions. Born and raised in Mexico City, she has a deep interest in exploring the psychological, ethnomusicological, and physical roots of her musical heritage.
She started pursuing musical composition in the Fall of 2012, under the guidance of the late Dr. David Stock. In the Spring of 2018, she completed her Master's level studies in Musical Composition under Leonardo Balada, at Carnegie Mellon University.
Her music has been performed by the Transient Canvas, the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Mellon University Contemporary Ensemble, Counter)inductions ensemble, the Carnegie Mellon University Philharmonic, Kamratōn ensemble, and Boston's White Snake Project, amongst others. She has participated in reading sessions with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under maestro Leonard Slatkin, as well as with the Houston Symphony Orchestra under Maestra Yue Bao.