Pianist Paul Barnes and Native flutist Ron Warren to premiere piece Monday in Lincoln – Lincoln Journal Star

Pianist Paul Barnes and Native flutist Ron Warren discuss blended music that combines Indigenous musical ideas with western classical music during an interview on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, in Lincoln, Neb.

Paul Barnes met Ron Warren in, of all places, North Dakota, when the Native flutist was called in to join Barnes, the Lincoln pianist, for a performance of Piano Concerto No. 2, After Lewis and Clark."

The performance of the piece that acclaimed composer Philip Glass wrote for Barnes began a creative collaboration between the musicians that extends to Monday night, culminating in the world premiere of The Way of Mountains and Desert, a solo piano piece Warren wrote for Barnes that will be the centerpiece of a program celebrating Warrens music.

Native flutistRon Warren (left) and University of Nebraska-Lincoln pianist Paul Barnes share a laugh as they rehearse at Westbrook Music Building on Friday.

R. Carlos Nakai played the Native flute when the concerto, commissioned for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial, premiered at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in 2004. But Nakai wasnt available when Barnes was to perform the concerto with the Minot Symphony Orchestra in 2010 and suggested Warren as his replacement.

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It went so well, I swore that every subsequent performance that I had of the Glass work and weve played it in California and, of course, we played it twice here I always wanted to have Ron flown in from wherever he was, Barnes said.

Later, Barnes learned that Warren was a composer following a Jacksonville, Florida, concert that Warren drove from his Orlando-area home to attend.

I went up to hear Paul and it was his Greek Orthodox chant-based concert, Warren said. I was so taken with his singing and with Orthodox chant that I became really intrigued. So I had a flute phrase that kind of grew into a small piano piece that I sent off to Paul, just to thank him for that show. He played it for about a season.

That 2018 piece, Distances Between, will open Mondays concert and, appropriately, Barnes, Warren and Omaha Symphony bassist Danielle Meier will perform an arrangement of Sacagawea, the second movement of the Glass concerto that features the Native flute.

The second half of Mondays program will open with the new piece that Barnes commissioned from Warren.

Because I just love the way that Ron wrote for the piano, I wanted to commission a larger scale work, a big 20- to 25-minute work that would be kind of the focal point of performances, he said. Thanks to the Hixson-Lied College (of Fine and Performing Arts) I got my grant, Ron got paid and wrote this incredible, incredible piece for me.

What:"The Way of Mountains and Desert," celebrating the music of Ron Warren

Where: Kimball Recital Hall, 11th and R streets

When: 7:30 p.m. Monday

Admission: Free

The Way of the Mountains and Desert was inspired by a Barnes trip to the American Southwest for an Orthodox retreat, as well as indigenous poetry and Warrens own experiences.

Those experiences included playing in a deep gorge in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park where reflections from a stream danced on the rock walls, giving Warren the idea for the high register, jumping, tinkling To Water, the pieces opening movement.

A lot of my music is the music of place anyway, of really trying to connect the beauty of a place and listening for what wants to be shared from that place, Warren said. So through a combination of our conversations, some of my favorite indigenous poets and my own memories from being in those places, what were calling the 'love song for the earth' grew as a flute song initially. From that grew the piano piece.

In Barnes Westbrook Music Building studio Friday, Barnes and Warren demonstrated how the flute song translates to the piano. While Barnes couldnt replicate the flutters of the flute and the piano added a low range of sounds, the graceful, flowing flute passage Warren played was largely replicated.

'I've always loved the way that Ron has played the flute, but I'm a pianist, so I never get to experience that," Barnes said. When he wrote this piano version of the flute song, it just felt so fluid. And I felt like I was actually a flute player.

Native flutistRon Warren rehearses Friday at Westbrook Music Building in Lincoln.

The concert will conclude with Beads, a four-movement duet between piano and Native flute that includes a section in which Warren gets to channel his inner Ian Anderson, the flutist of Jethro Tull fame.

That, too, could be heard during Fridays rehearsal, which vividly demonstrated how Native flute could be inserted into Western classical music, which Warren said isnt all that novel.

There are numerous indigenous musicians who, he said, are involved in every kind of music you can think of from classical piano to experimental electronic musicians building their own instruments.

The Way of Mountains and Desert, which Warren and Barnes will perform again in New York in May and likely play at concerts around the country over the next year, is a perfect example of something vibrantly new.

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