Red Mesa (1989) was written at the request of the composer and pianist Max Litschitz, and is dedicated to Ruth Anderson. It was written after a solo journey I made in the starkly beautiful Four Corners desert country of the American Southwest in 1988. A mesa is a flat-topped tableland with steep flanks. Some, such as Mesa Verde, shelter cliff dwellings, pueblos with origins dating back to the 500s A.D., elegant houses and ceremonial structures arising by the early 1100s, and largely deserted by the early 14th century, due, it is thought, to a long drought.

Annea Lockwood