Duluth composer Wendy Durrwachter's 'Laurentia' symphony premieres in November

When Duluth composer Wendy Durrwachter looks out her window, she sees Lake Superior stretching out to infinity.

“I am so lucky,” she said. “My house is nothing special, but I live right across the street from the lake. I never want to move.”

The lake — and the geological forces that forged it — inspired her to compose Laurentia, a three-movement symphony that will have its premiere with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra on Nov. 4. Having already written a symphony about the landscape and waterways of the region surrounding Ashland, Wis., for a previous commission, she said, “it was in my mind that I wanted to do something about my own region.”

The North Shore wasn’t always her region, but Durrwachter, a native of Green Bay, Wis., became enamored of the area while traveling to the Boundary Waters (which she “fell in love with”) as a girl.

“I always loved Duluth,” she said “I was shocked that there was this city perched above the lake. I thought there was possibly no other place in the world like it.”

It became a place for Durrwachter to hone her composition skills. Having studied piano since 3, she gave up piano performance in college because of the pressure of always having to practice.

“I had a craving to be a regular person,” she said.

She ended up studying orchestration at the University of Minnesota with composer/pianist Judith Zaimont, who “didn’t give compliments freely, but did give me some that still sit with me today and made me think I should continue forward,” Durrwachter said.

Nonetheless, she said she was disenchanted with music the way it was usually taught and gave it up when she was a busy, young mother just out of college. It sought her out anyway.

“One day, I was in the kitchen and a melody just haunted me,” she said. “I realized I’d never heard it, and I wrote it down.”

Durrwachter, 45, whose “day job” is in the restaurant/spirits industry, began playing piano for a church whose choir director, Jim Pospisil, also is principal horn for the DSSO and a fount of expertise on all things orchestral. As she played more public performances around town, the feedback gave her yet more encouragement.

“People had such emotional responses, and so I carried on,” she said.

When she began thinking about Laurentia, which the orchestra commissioned to honor Duluth and its environs, she drew partly on her lifelong love of water — from her earliest adventures on the polluted Fox River in Wisconsin to those trips to the Boundary Waters, which were so crystal clear she could drink the drops sluicing off her canoe paddle. She also volunteers with Duluth for Clean Water in the effort to protect the watershed.

Water, however, came late in the earthly progression, which Durrwachter acknowledges in the symphony’s movements that trace that evolution: “Gabbro and Ice,” “Forest and Fen” and “The Flowage.”

As she writes in her notes for Laurentia: “When I stand on these rocks on the north shore of Minnesota, I imagine the geological story of their creation, a mental journey through ancient time. … It is impossible to ignore the dynamic story of fire and ice that shaped this region to become the rarity it is.”

Indeed, the title refers to the craton, or continental crust, that forms the ancient geological core of North America. When choosing the name, Durrwachter said she thought, “What can sum up this region with one very succinct word that is pretty? I thought about ‘craton,’ but that’s an ugly word. A geologist friend agreed that ‘Laurentia’ was a really great summary.”

As for the work itself, Durrwachter wants listeners to feel the connection to the vast and ancient northland.

“It’s a love poem to the geological processes that formed this region,” she said.

Laurentia premieres with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra at 7 p.m. Nov. 4, DECC Symphony Hall, 350 Harbor Dr., Duluth. Tickets: $10-$60, dsso.com, 218-623-2776.