Project Earth Day - 2006Return to Special Events page
 A Walk through Shaw's Garden
Flower photos above and
butterfly photo by John LampkinThe Equinox Chamber Players celebrate Earth Day 2006 with a concert series featuring the world premiere of A Walk Through Shaw's Garden by composer John Lampkin. Generously commissioned by Betty Thorn Homann for the Equinox Chamber Players, the work is a tribute to the Missouri Botanical Garden and to Henry Shaw, the man who created it. The world premiere concert will be performed at the Garden, and will air on the radio show From the Garden "Live!" FM 99.1 Noon, April 23rd, 2005. Surrounding the premiere, Mr. Lampkin and the players will perform in a series of outreach presentations in eight area schools and centers for students, the general public and older adults. Mr. Lampkin, who is also a nature photographer, will be in residence to address the audiences. His photographs will complement the live performances.
Project Earth Day - 2006 is designed to:
Celebrate the earth, people, plant and animals
Celebrate St. Louis history and our present environment
Align music with the study of relationships between people and environment
Touch upon the detrimental effects of modern civilization
Include music from other geographical areas around the world
Contribute to the library of contemporary music
Allow accessibility to the creative process of composition and story telling
Introduce classical music to many considered underserved in access to the arts and arts education
Missouri Botanical Garden
Photo by John Lampkin
A Walk through Shaw's Garden
by John Lampkin
A Walk Through Shaw's Garden is a tone poem inspired by the beauty and depths of the Missouri Botanical Garden. While not entirely programmatic in concept, different movements and sections evoke specific images and experiences, such as the explosion of color in spring, the darting dance of dragonflies in August, and the simple majesty of Henry Shaw's final resting place. In all, the work will be a tribute to the man, the garden, and the tremendous legacy left to future
generations.
 Although he is still alive, John Lampkin is finding modest success as a composer. In a review of his Portraits series for piano, Piano Quarterly wrote, "...[John Lampkin] is incredibly gifted with a wonderful sense of humor." Which proves it. Portraits was also cited in the millennium issue of Piano & Keyboard magazine as one of the significant educational collections of the 20th century. The list of 60 composers included Debussy, Bartok, Copland, etc., all of whom had an unfair advantage because they were already dead.
Critics have also looked beneath the humor to find seriousness and intelligent musical thought. His Insects: a Musical Entomology in Six Legs for woodwind quintet won the Grand Prize in the Composer Guild's 2001 competition. In review of the premiere, the Austin press wrote, "it eschews the academic dryness of the past century yet supplies a wealth of innovative textures, rhythms and harmonies. [Lampkin]... has craftily woven musical visualizations of fleas, ants, fireflies and cockroaches into a delightful and accessible musical confection."
In 2002, St. Louis enjoyed the Mid-west premiere of Insects, performed by the Equinox Chamber Players, in the Shoenberg Auditorium of the Missouri Botanical Garden in celebration of Earth Day 2002 .
Commissioned by the Equinox Chamber Players and premiered at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis in 2003, Lampkin's Migrations subsequently won Second Prize in the Composers Guild's 35th annual contest. In addition, his Piano Concerto took the competition's First Prize in 1999 and has been performed numerous times across the country, continuing to attract new champions.
An active member of the Audubon Society, Mr. Lampkin is also a nature photographer and has published his photo journal entitled Into a Nest of Tree Swallows.... which is a day by day chronicle of bird life from egg to fledgeling. Mr. Lampkin is represented by iphotoart.com.
Equinox Chamber Players would like to thank Mrs. Betty Thorn Homann, who generously commissioned John Lampkin's A Walk Through Shaw's Garden. Without the wonderful patrons of past and present, such as Mrs. Thorn Homann, we would not have the Garden, museums, Mozart Symphonies and so much more of the great art we love cherish and enjoy today.
Today's program is a part of a nine-event series titled Project Earth Day. Generous financial assistance has been provided by the Regional Arts Commission-St. Louis, Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, the E. Desmond Lee Fine Arts Education Collaborative, University of Missouri-St Louis, Frank G. & Florence V. Bohle Scholarship Foundation, George & Alice Rich Charitable Foundation, Missouri Botanical Garden, Mid-America Arts Alliance, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, and the Virgil Thomson Foundation and Meet the Composer, and many private donors. Thank you to Classic 99, KWMU, KDHX for having us on your shows!
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