When I was younger, my family would take yearly road trips to New Mexico from our home in Austin. The journey took nearly half a day, carrying us through the most remote parts of west Texas and into the lower Rocky Mountains. I was always struck by the endless horizons, the quiet desert air, and the vastness of the landscape. There was something hauntingly beautiful about that emptiness—a feeling that stirred images of the “wild west”—a world so legendary, yet still lost to history.

The American West has long held a mythic place in my imagination. To me, it embodies the full range of the American spirit: rugged independence, moral struggle, the search for redemption, triumph, and the unforgiving yet awe-inspiring power of nature. These themes have been brought to life in timeless western films such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Magnificent Seven, The Big Country—each painting its own vision of courage, conflict, and vast, untamed beauty. Though the genre has largely faded from popular culture, its echoes still resonate, reminding us of the values and contradictions that shaped it.

Echoes of the Frontier seeks to recapture that spirit. Cast as an overture in four scenes, the work explores the grandeur, beauty, danger, and triumph that defined—and mythologized—the American West.