When composer and former Blue Oyster Cult drummer Ron Riddle learned that a timber wolf had been picked up by the local SPCA, he and his wife Andrea decided to take him in. Over the next four years the Riddles and “Chance” created what animal behaviorists call an inter-species pack.  The Riddles, with Jody Enck, a research associate in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell who specializes in restoring animal species to places where they have been absent for decades, will present “Living with Chance” at this year’s festival.  Light in Winter’s Barbara Mink and Marie Sirakos joined the Riddles and Jody Enck for a discussion about the creation of the event.  Here is a short excerpt from what was revealed in that meeting:

Ron Riddle: The good news is the music is almost finished.  I’ve been working on that for a couple of weeks, and we’ve just had some kind of amazing…

Barbara Mink: This is a score, Ron?

RR: Yeah.

BM: Okay.

RR: We had some amazing things happen, should I tell her?

Andrea Riddle: Yeah, tell her!

RR: Well, basically, I wanted the piece to be almost a score for the lead vocalist to be a wolf, or a wolf howl.

AR: Well, not our wolf.

RR: Well, I’d love for it to be him!  We unfortunately didn’t have any audio of him howling, just the same way that we didn’t have any video of him as a youngster, because we were all too busy doing the whole deal.

BM: Right.

AR: And, maybe Jody has some information about this, he’s lost his howl.

Jody Enck: He’s lost his howl?

RR: He’s lost his howl.

JE: And that’s pretty recent?

AR: Yeah, we don’t know whether it’s an aging phenomena, has there been research on aging wolves losing their howl?  Probably not.

JE: They often don’t live to be that old.

RR: So, there’s no research on it.  Also, our other dog died around the same time as that.  There may be some correlation to that, we don’t know.

AR: We don’t know what it is, but he used to have a fantastic howl, and one of the things that we loved to do as a family was, you know, go out there and all howl together, and we learned that wolves pack howl in different intervals, so we got our harmony down, and we were fabulous, but…he opens his mouth, and just air comes through.

BM: Oh, my.

RR: Yeah.  He’s suckin’ wind. (laughing)

JE: Quite literally, yeah.

BM: So, what did you do?

RR: So, I was running through my digital video, and came across a cassette that said “Wolf Howl” on it.  And I put it in, and there wasn’t any video on it all, and then I came across all these howls that were on it.  I remember years ago taking the camera and putting it outside one particular night.  And that was the first…I never checked.  So there it was, and it was him howling, and what was amazing about it was I started putting it against the piece, and it was phenomenal because it was in the same key, it was exactly…it was spooky.  It was totally-

BM: Without any adjustment?

RR: Without any adjustment. It was totally phenomenal, I got so excited because it was like both of us were creating this piece now.  Because it was like he was creating it almost as much as I was creating it.  So, you know, I’ll have to put him in the credits. (laughing)

BM: You know the fact that they’re his howls makes it very special.  But I need to ask you something as a lay person, wit all due respect.

RR: Yeah.

BM: How is this different than what Paul Winter does with incorporating animal sounds and nature sounds?  Would you say it is?  Or is it just more personal?

RR: I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about that question.  I think the difference…what would the difference be?

AR: Well, I think what I know about Paul Winter and his making music with animals is that he is out there in the wild, and he does his thing, and something responds or it doesn’t, and that’s the piece and there you go.  This is a piece that is a reflection of this relationship.

BM: That’s what it sounds like to me.  The intent gives it a lot more depth.

RR: Exactly.

AR: The piece is about Ron and Chance.

BM: Well, especially if you say that it really is in the same key.  I mean I know that Paul Winter not only asks for response, but also gives response himself, so if he has a wolf call in a certain key, he will build music around it.  But in this case it was this kind of synchronicity.

RR: It was just like…it was perfect.

JE: It’s almost like you subconsciously remembered.

Marie Sirakos: That’s just what I was going to ask.

RR: It could very well be, and you know, when I was composing the piece I would have pictures of him there flashing on the screen, so I was constantly reminded of what I was doing.  And the piece to me has a lot of different sections to it, so it’s a lot of different moods and experiences that I had with him in a way that can’t be communicated through words, so it’s communicated through music.

Be sure to get your tickets to what promises to be an enlightening presentation and discussion about our relationship to wild animals.  For tickets, go here.