Inspired by the natural beauty of my immediate surroundings and by my concerns about the environmental future of our planet, I composed Gaian Visions in July of 1990 during a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The title of the work refers to Gaia, the Earth goddess of ancient Greece, and to British scientist James Lovelock's Gaian hypothesis, which holds that the earth is a living, self-regulating organism that is capable of annihilating anything it perceives to be...