The Global Search for Education: Exploring Humanity’s Harmony with Nature

Posted By C. M. Rubin on Feb 16, 2025

This month, audiences can stream Thinking Like a Mountain (performed by the Shanghai Symphony) by composer Victoria Bond on the Planet Classroom Network.

Victoria Bond’s illustrious career as a composer and conductor has been lauded by critics worldwide. The New York Times describes her compositions as “powerful, stylistically varied, and technically demanding,” while her conducting has been hailed as “impassioned” and “full of energy and fervor.”

Her composition, Thinking Like a Mountain, masterfully combines Aldo Leopold’s reflections on nature with her evocative music, offering a poignant exploration of humanity’s connection to the environment. Filmed with the Shanghai Symphony, it’s a call to preserve our planet through the universal language of music.

The Global Search for Education is pleased to welcome Victoria Bond.

Victoria, Aldo Leopold’s essay serves as the foundation for both the narrative and the musical composition of Thinking Like a Mountain. How did you interpret Leopold’s philosophy through music, and what challenges did you face in translating these ideas into an orchestral and visual medium?

My composition opens with a “portrait” of the mountain and the various life cycles that coexist within it: the slow tempo of the rocks, whose life cycle can extend for millions of years; the trees, whose cycle spans hundreds of years; the animals, whose cycle is measured in decades; and the insects, whose cycle is measured in days. I was fascinated by how these cycles intersect and overlap to make up the totality of the mountain. In music, this can be expressed by augmentation and diminution—that is, having the same or similar notes played at different speeds and overlapped. I am also intrigued by wolf howls and the musicality of their song, so I incorporated them into the orchestra, using my imagination to interpret their sounds as musical notes.

This film blends Leopold’s reflections, evocative visuals, and your original composition to create a meditative experience. What role do you see cross-disciplinary collaboration playing in enhancing environmental awareness through art?

I believe music can enhance emotions. It is a language unto itself and cannot express philosophy. The film was created by Blue Ridge Public Television and coordinated with my music. I requested the filmmaker include wolves in the video, so we visited a wolf breeding farm where wild wolves are cared for and released into the wild to rebuild the population, which was largely destroyed in America.

Your work often involves cross-cultural partnerships, such as collaborating with the Shanghai Symphony for this project. How did this collaboration influence the final composition and the broader message of Thinking Like a Mountain?

I used a Chinese folk song, “One Thousand Birds Worshipping the Phoenix,” as the thematic basis for my composition. I heard this song while conducting concerts in China and fell in love with it, so I decided to use it as the theme of my piece.

As a conductor, composer, and advocate for contemporary music, what do you hope audiences take away from Thinking Like a Mountain about humanity’s relationship with the environment and the role of art in addressing ecological challenges?

With the text from Aldo Leopold’s essay, the message is clear: humanity must treat the natural world with respect and act as wise caretakers of the land, rather than exploiting it for profit. Leopold uses wolves as a metaphor for the top predator that keeps nature in balance. When that predator is removed, the balance is destroyed.

Thank you, Victoria!