Mother Underneath

The Mother Underneath Low Clarinet Quintet is a super-group of bass clarinet all-stars Jeffrey Anderle, Julia Lougheed, Alanna Benoit, Stephen White, and Kimberly Fullerton. These five accomplished performers, educators, and innovators of music for low clarinets have joined forces to perform Cornelius Boots’s newest work, “MOTHER UNDERNEATH”
As founding members of the Edmund Wells Bass Clarinet Quartet, Cornelius Boots and Jeff Anderle have always been true pioneers of low clarinet music and playing styles. In this collaboration, Boots has combined the the dynamic soundscape of three bass clarinets with the might of two contrabasses -- resulting in an entirely new ensemble, one with a powerful sound.

Programmatically, this piece is based on ecological magic of the underground world of soil within forests as described by Dr. Suzanne Simard in her book "Finding the Mother Tree", published in May 2021. In the soil, there billions of tiny organisms, and the mycorrhizal network forms a communication-and-exchange web of nutrients between tree roots and vast fungal networks. This casts brilliant new light on cooperative ecosystems, perhaps offering an example to humans.