Wildheart of the Evergreen is a concert work for solo organ set in the fictional world of Sonokoda, following a free-spirited huntress as she journeys through an ancient forest inhabited by animals and luminous spirits.

I began writing this piece as early as 2020 but set it aside for several years. During that time, I composed many other works, including my first symphony – Sonokoda, which shares an important connection with this piece. In retrospect, that hiatus proved beneficial, as much of the symphony’s development involved establishing the earlier history and worldbuilding that both works rely upon.

Five years later, I returned to the piece and completed most of it, finally finishing it in July 2026.

The story of Wildheart

Set in a much earlier era of Sonokoda – the fictional world I have been building and exploring through music since my earliest compositions, and which eventually gave rise to my first symphony of the same name – Wildheart is a tribal woman of a feline-like species that roams the planet. At this point in this world’s history, there are no machines or modern infrastructure. The lands are ruled by creatures and luminous spirits, and its inhabitants live in a much closer relationship with them than in the time of the symphony.

In this piece, we follow Wildheart, a free-spirited gatherer and huntress from the tribe of the Evergreen – one of the vast forests stretching across the towering mountains and deep valleys of Sonokoda – on her adventures through the forest in search of food, healing plants and resources. She always travels alone and is sometimes gone for weeks before returning to the village at the forest’s edge.

The forest is dark and deep green, filled with the familiar scent of pine and cedar. It teems with animals and spirits, while its hilly, often steep terrain is broken by quarries and rivers. Along the way, Wildheart must overcome many obstacles, perhaps none greater than her encounter with one of the forest’s largest spirits – a luminous, canid-like being formed from trees, rocks, and the forest floor itself.