Zegiel, Evan - The Understory

Written for Tuba and heavy metal band (Fixed Media) The Understory, the second track on my album, The Human Element, is a sort of companion piece to Oceanic Ignition, the first track on the album. While Oceanic Ignition focuses on the impact of humans on the ocean ecosystems, The Understory is centered around deciduous forests. Specifically, it refers to the lowest level of the forest, where so many important processes occur that are essential to the world’s biosphere. I wrote the piece while working my second summer at Interlochen Center for the Arts in 2022. During my summers there, I spent a great deal of time hiking various trails in the Sleeping Bear Dunes area, as well as around the many nearby lakes and recreation areas. I had also recently finished reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory by Richard Powers. That novel centers around the now-proven theory that trees within a forest communicate with each other through the release of various chemicals. When we humans