''Prayer for the Wild Things'' is an album released by Paul Winter in 1994. The album was commissioned to accompany a painting by artist

Bev Doolittle Bev Doolittle (born February 10, 1947) is an American artist working mainly in watercolor paints. She creates paintings of the American West that feature themes of Native American life, wild animals, horses, and landscapes. Biography Doolittle ...

, which is also titled Prayer For The Wild Things. A portion of this painting is seen on the album cover. Paul Winter created the album to depict in the listener's mind a journey through a day and night in the Northern Rockies, and based it on "a series of vignettes about the animals, with the saxophone recurring throughout as a kind of interlocutor". After choosing which animals to represent on the album, Winter chose instruments to accompany each animal that he felt represented that animal in some way. To demonstrate how all of these animals are interconnected in life, the melodies played on these instruments were written so that they could all be interwoven. Paul traveled around the area of the Northern Rockies during the creation of this album, during which he went to a number of National Parks and played improvised duets with many of the animals in the parks. These duets were recorded, and many of them were put on the album as well. The album won the Grammy for best new age album in 1995.

Track listing

# "Eagle Mountain" (Winter) # "Round Dance" (Neskahi) # "On the River" (Winter) # "Buffalo Prairie" (Winter) # "Osprey" (Winter) # "Grizzly Bear Cubs with Their Mom After Breakfast" (Friesen, Haddad, Winter) # "Tritones in the Canyon" (Winter) # "Moose Walk" (Velez, Winter) # "Gates of the Mountain" (Winter) # "Cougar Bassoon" (Urbinato) # "Antelope Dreams of Her African Cousins" (Winter) # "Afternoon's End" (Velez, Winter) # "Sunset on Eagle Mountain" (Winter) # "White Goat of the Rockies" (Friesen, Winter) # "Loon on Mud Pond" (Winter) # "Night Voices" # "Elk Horns" (Clark, Winter) # "North Fork Wolves in the Midnight Rain" (Winter) # "Night into Dawn" (Winter) # "Dance of All Beings" (Neskahi) # "Eagle Mountain" (Winter)

Personnel

* Paul Winter – soprano saxophone * John Clark –

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...

* Randy Wolfgang – English horn * Mark Perchanok –

heckelphone The heckelphone (german: Heckelphon) is a musical instrument invented by Wilhelm Heckel and his sons. The idea to create the instrument was initiated by Richard Wagner, who suggested it at the occasion of a visit of Wilhelm Heckel in 1879. In ...

* John Urbinato – bassoon * Dennis Smylie –

contrabass clarinet The contrabass clarinet (also pedal clarinet, after the pedals of pipe organs) and contra-alto clarinet are the two largest members of the clarinet family that are in common usage. Modern contrabass clarinets are transposing instruments pitc ...

Paul Halley Paul Halley (born 1952 in Romford, England) is a keyboardist, vocalist and composer. He is perhaps best known as being a member of and composer for the Paul Winter Consort. Biography Paul Halley was born in England in 1952. His father was a ...

– pipe organ *

Eugene Friesen Eugene Friesen (born 1952) is an American cellist and composer. Early life Friesen was born in 1952 to Russian Mennonite parents. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Music. Career Friesen has been a member of the Paul Winter Consort since ...

– cello * Gordon Gottlieb – percussion *

Jamey Haddad Jamey George Haddad (born July 2, 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American percussionist who works primarily in the fields of jazz and world music and specializes in hand drums. Biography Haddad is of Lebanese ancestry. From the age of four, he b ...

– percussion *

Glen Velez Glen Velez (born 1949) is a four-time Grammy winning American percussionist, vocalist, and composer, specializing in frame drums from around the world. He is largely responsible for the increasing popularity of frame drums in the United States an ...

– percussion * Arlie Neskahi and the White Eagle Singers

Animals of the Rocky Mountains

The calls of birds and mammals from the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

were used as part of the album. Animals included in the album are: *

Elk The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common ...

* Bison * Grizzly bear * Loon *

Mountain lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. ...

* Bald eagle *

Osprey The osprey (''Pandion haliaetus''), , also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor reaching more than in length and across the wings. It is brown o ...

* Antelope * Canada goose *

Wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

* Raven *

American bittern The American bittern (''Botaurus lentiginosus'') is a species of wading bird in the heron family. It has a Nearctic distribution, breeding in Canada and the northern and central parts of the United States, and wintering in the U.S. Gulf Coast ...

White-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

* Coyote *

Boreal owl The boreal owl or Tengmalm's owl (''Aegolius funereus'') is a small owl in the "true owl" family Strigidae. It is known as the boreal owl in North America and as Tengmalm's owl in Europe after Swedish naturalist Peter Gustaf Tengmalm or, more ...

Golden eagle The golden eagle (''Aquila chrysaetos'') is a bird of prey living in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the most widely distributed species of eagle. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. They are one of the best-known birds of ...

Sandhill crane The sandhill crane (''Antigone canadensis'') is a species of large crane of North America and extreme northeastern Siberia. The common name of this bird refers to habitat like that at the Platte River, on the edge of Nebraska's Sandhills on ...

Hermit thrush The hermit thrush (''Catharus guttatus'') is a medium-sized North American thrush. It is not very closely related to the other North American migrant species of ''Catharus'', but rather to the Mexican russet nightingale-thrush. The specific na ...

Trumpeter swan The trumpeter swan (''Cygnus buccinator'') is a species of swan found in North America. The heaviest living bird native to North America, it is also the largest extant species of waterfowl, with a wingspan of 185 to 250 cm (6 ft 2 in to 8 ft 2 ...

Whooping crane The whooping crane (''Grus americana'') is the tallest North American bird, named for its whooping sound. It is an endangered crane species. Along with the sandhill crane (''Antigone canadensis''), it is one of only two crane species native to ...

* Uphill sandpiper * Ruffled grouse *

Greater prairie chicken The greater prairie chicken or pinnated grouse (''Tympanuchus cupido''), sometimes called a boomer,Friederici, Peter (July 20, 1989)"The Last Prairie Chickens" ''Chicago Reader''. Retrieved August 27, 2014.（Chinese 中文：帕艺明彩大凤� ...

Willow ptarmigan The willow ptarmigan () (''Lagopus lagopus'') is a bird in the grouse subfamily Tetraoninae of the pheasant family Phasianidae. It is also known as the willow grouse and in Ireland and Britain, where the subspecies '' L. l. scotica'' was prev ...

* Belted kingfisher * Swainson's thrush *

Western meadowlark The western meadowlark (''Sturnella neglecta'') is a medium-sized icterid bird, about in length. It nests on the ground in open grasslands across western and central North America. It feeds mostly on bugs, but will also feed on seeds and berri ...

The recordings of animal calls along with saxophone solos were recorded at Gates of the Mountains, Glacier National Park, and

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowst ...

References

Living Music.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prayer For The Wild Things 1994 albums Paul Winter albums Grammy Award for Best New Age Album Living Music albums