Stekyoden Departures by Lisa Bella Donna

released October 4, 2024

Composed, realized, recorded, & mixed by Lisa Bella Donna
at Appalachian Recording Studio & Rolling Hills Recording,
July 2021 - April 2024 - Mixed to Tascam DA-3000 DSD
Mastered by: Strawberry
Vinyl mastering and lacquers by: Well Made Music
Front cover & photography :
"Stekyoden on Gitxsan Territory" by Dale Cutler


Stekyoden Departures: A voyage of transcendental mirage

"I began composing this album in July 2021, deep in the woods and valleys near the Muskingum River. It's a vast, everlasting woodland I have always felt, much like the river, is a very sacred place. A territory ever flowing with sacred stories passed down through many lifetimes and lifelines of great spirits and their reflections.

It's a rare and wondrous way to compose. To awaken before dawn, packed and ready for a day of deep listening, observation, and manifestation. Making your way out through deep woods in the pitch-black, pre-dawn atmosphere is a journey that can prove to be a challenging test of character — especially in the summer months. However, I’ve always felt it's the only way to truly study the true spirit and form of our world’s greatest composers and arrangers: the very depth and heart of nature itself.

I’d start hiking with intent, searching for a location that felt like the right place to begin each session. Create just enough light to set up camp, bringing order to my surroundings by getting some coffee percolating, and unpacking my supplies. Then, the setting was right to spend time subjectively listening and taking note of the faint sounds of the early morning.

Once I was settled in and in a position comfortably adjacent to the distance of the surrounding hills, embankments, and streams, it would begin. The meditation and invitation to witness the confluence of the awakening dawn. Encircled by a vast canopy of timeless wildlife and the towering atmospheres rising miles above it conducting the orchestrations of the unfolding day.

In workshops and masterclasses I've led over the years, I’ve always expressed the most poignant and prodigious composer is Mother Nature. The best practice for any developing composer is to seat yourself deeply within the soundstage of nature. All you need to do is to listen as closely and as attentively as humanly possible. To listen to and become lost and found in the efflorescence and flow of what a full day of doing this will reveal is truly remarkable. The lasting impact and awareness are incredibly tremendous and precious. As each six-hour period passes, something shifts in the phase of one’s perception and awareness between the circulation of music and sound. Not to mention how much this will expand and transcend if you can stay for an extended period of days or weeks — your only intention: deeply listening to and internalizing everything you hear in a single day of nature.

So many apparitions and occluded mysteries become musical journeys that reveal themselves through the intonation of sound. Through the mediation of listening, we begin to open the doors to so much more than the sole intention to make evocative sound. The more we tune into the frequencies and bandwidth of our deep, ageless wilderness, we soon connect to the spirits and souls that lie just beyond the circumference of time and space.

It's through prayer, a willingness and desire to listen and seek a deeper meaning of this resonance, that we’re able to find moments to voyage into, and through, other realms; guided into their most timeless destinations. To drink from their streams and witness the altitudes they require to explore and expand our rapport with them.

It never ceases to amaze me what depth and degree of opportunity each of us has as human beings when we simply allow nature to guide us further into the meadowlands of our journey and identity within it. How it absorbs, changes, and evolves us. The lasting impression we can have on others through our intentions, impressions, and expressions of what we discover along the way.

Of course, the spirit and temperament of this practice will change and reveal a phantasmagoria of awareness and reflection the further you explore different destinations of our beautiful earth. Between 2021 and 2024, through chapters of different seasons, pieces of these compositions were realized in hidden parts of West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Pacific Northwest, Canada, and a plethora of places where I was fortunate to meet the day with the winds of time. Simply to learn and be humbled by the masters that constantly swirl around us; calling us, inviting us to remember that we were once in tune with the graceful and electrical wings of destiny. To create and rejoice in the magic of manifestation. To transport throughout its attitudes of transfiguration.

The pieces on this album are small tokens I found along the way. Each moment beneath them, a jewel in the lotus of my gratitude for life and the evocation of this music that becomes between the stereo speakers."

In love & music,
Lisa Bella Donna
Appalachian Mountains
October, 2024



Impressions on "Stekyoden Depatures"...
By Matt Scutchfield

"Liner note essays often instruct the listener
to put down the booklet while listening. Read it
before or after, don’t let it get in the way.
I’d suggest that here too, but not to avoid disrupting
your concentration, but because the music on this album will grab hold of you, and not let you go until the last sound ends, and it’s such an enjoyable experience. Let it happen. Come back to these notes, or to whatever else you might be looking at, after Lisa Bella Donna returns you from this journey. Her analog vessel is departing momentarily, are you ready?

Lisa Bella Donna is one of the most interesting musical figures I know of, for many reasons, but for one specifically that I want to reflect on with you in these notes. My musical tastes run the gamut, from the high-lonesome sound of bluegrass that I was raised in, to the frenetic sounds of 20th century classical composers that I pursued in college, to the village folk songs of cultures around the world that I seek out. Having such a wide desire of music has resulted in making many, many friends from very different contexts. Sometimes, life gives us an opportunity for many of us to get together, and it can be quite the experience trying to find music that we’d all want to listen to and equally enjoy.

One such opportunity will always be in my mind: two friends from Europe came to visit me in USA, and we had a lengthy road trip. I’m not sure the three of us even had one artist that we all loved in common, but we needed something on the drive, so we started cycling through numerous genres and artists, occasionally finding something that one person would kind of like, while the other loved it. Then, on the return trip, I noticed LBD had a recent release posted, so I turned it on. She was a new name for my two friends, but within two minutes or less, they both were totally amazed, and in love with what was coming out of the speakers. So was I. They are now both regular listeners of hers. How many artists can capture and hold the amazement of so many different musical tastes all at once? So far, the only one I have encountered has been Lisa Bella Donna.

Now I want to explore how she achieves that.
The music that unfolds over these three pieces is some of the greatest music I’ve heard yet, and is potentially my favorite music from Lisa Bella Donna so far. (Though, we all know that another masterpiece is only a release away.) So many things pulled me into the world of “new music” and all of those things I find within these pieces. This album is total proof that LBD has done her homework, and knows the great styles and works of 20th/21st century composers inside and out. In "Ihtsipatapiyohpa", the textures and timbres that she presents make the piece feel like it was a masterpiece that I studied from one of my favorite composers. Hints of Carter, Haas, Penderecki and others come to mind, yet it’s also completely Lisa’s voice, making its own statement - like a nod to all of the composers she’s listened to and loved, and incorporated into her own musical language.

The compositional techniques she employs on this album show true study and skill, and feels like they come from the mind of an orchestral composer. This time though, the orchestra all fits perfectly on top of Lisa’s desk. I can only imagine the process, time, and discipline it took to dial all of these elements in, and to dial them in as musically perfectly as they are here. From the hearty rumble of the cello to the high floating line of the flute in "Ihtsipatapiyohpa", to the enchanting entrances in "Man, Myth, and Magic", there is a lot to experience, and it’s a joy to get
to. The soundstage here is massive, and every nuance only adds more and more to the experience.

The album closes with "Man, Myth, and Magic", a piece that is so much of a listening journey that I struggle to find the words that convey what’s happening in this piece - especially in regards to it’s emotional impact. I’ve written about many compositions and productions, but none of that prepared me for how to put the listening experience of this piece into words. Simply put: it’s everything I want to hear in music. This piece reminds me of something I’ve heard before…something I’ve experienced…somewhere I’ve been…yet knowing I experienced none of that, and that this is happening for the first time.

Lisa Bella Donna’s choice of timbre, pace, and development is one of true mastery. It’s as if she summoned all of the wisdom of great composers before her, and then put it all into this album.

The arc of this track shows both absolute compositional discipline and artistry. This piece clocks in at almost a half hour, but felt like only a few minutes from start to finish. That’s when you know you’ve found sonic gold.

Within a few seconds of "n The Beginning", the listener knows this album is going to be such a deep experience to listen to. The specific timbres, sounds, and entrances present in this track are absolutely what they should be. Lisa Bella Donna’s thorough discography has touched upon numerous idioms and genres. Sometimes longer forms, sometimes shorter, sometimes tonal, sometimes not. If I had to pick only one that I got to listen to, it would be this one.

Everything about it is so enjoyable, and demonstrates such well thought out and well imagined composing. Let her take you on many journeys. She’ll be your tour guide, your narrator, and your captain, and will always be ready for when you want to come along again.

Oh, and did I figure out her secret to appealing to so many different musical tastes? I’m not sure if anyone will every truly know, but there’s two things that help. One: she’s a master, end of sentence. Two: take a look at the music she listens to that she shares on social media. It ranges from the softest of musics to the hardest of musics. She herself encompasses and enjoys all of that and everything in between. It’s only natural that it comes out in her music in a way that makes first time listeners from any background say “Wow! I love this!” It is an honor and a joy to be affiliated with this release, and I am always filled with eagerness to know what
Lisa Bella Donna is up to next."

Matt Scutchfield
Chicago, Illinois, October, 2024



All compositions / recordings / sounds
©2021 / 2024 Lisa Bella Donna / Appalachian Recordings ASCAP