Bozeman Magazine

Fire and drought have become defining aspects of life in the western United States. How are these phenomena changing people internally, how are they reshaping communities, and how are they changing the way we look at the landscape? For eighteen months, composer Scott Ordway traveled widely in California in order to pose these questions to individuals and communities, and between December 2020 and June 2022, he collected 80,000 words of first hand witness accounts of fire and drought from 225 Californians in towns and cities throughout the state. He also took thousands of photographs and hundreds of minutes of video. Drawing on these raw materials, Ordway created the The End of Rain, a multimedia work for chamber orchestra, choir, and landscape photography.