Tag: Lake Erie

2026 . . . Symphonic Sketches . . . 34 minutes

My home for the first 25 years of my life was in the “Great Lake State,” Michigan. It is surrounded by three of these five enormous bodies of water, some of the most recognizable map shapes on the entire globe. Magnificent Lake Superior, the deepest, is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and the third-largest freshwater lake by volume.

I spent the most time at Lake Michigan, the closest to Interlochen, where I lived for ten summers. All the photos below are of it, shot around the Leelanau Peninsula and Grand Traverse Bay. I learned to sail on Lake Erie.

The music of this five-movement symphony took shape over five years in five other musical sketches: Three States of Water, Shining Water, Great Lake (percussion), Leelanau Sketches, and Dancing Water. Perhaps it all began, though, way back in 1984 with PENINSULA for piano and computer music, my first work published on a CD by Centaur Records. In it, you can “hear” the rocky shores around Northport, the point of the beautiful Leelanau Peninsula, shown here in the first photo.

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