Summerland

• Summerland is a movement from Three Visions, a piano suite that Still composed in 1935 for his wife, Verna Arvey. Arvey played the suite’s premiere in Los Angeles in 1936. ¹ 
• Still also arranged “Summerland” as a standalone work for chamber orchestra.²
• Still’s Three Visions is “dedicated to my friends who have departed this life.”³

“The three segments of the suite, Dark Horsemen, Summerland, and Radiant Pinnacle, tell the story of the human soul after death: the body expires, and the soul goes on to an apocalyptic judgment. If it is seen that the past life has been a good one, the soul may enter ‘heaven,’ or ‘Summerland’. After a period of time, the soul may reincarnate to learn additional earthly lessons on the human plane. Some souls reincarnate many times in a constant circular progress toward Godly perfection.” 

Judith Anne Still, the composer’s daughter and biographer, on Three Visions⁴

1. Judith Anne Still, Michael J. Dabrishus, and Carolyn L. Quin, William Grant Still: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 193. 
2. Verna Arvey, “William Grant Still,” in William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions by Catherine Parsons Smith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 329, accessed August 12, 2021, https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft1h4nb0g0;brand=ucpress.
3. Judith Anne Still, Michael J. Dabrishus, and Carolyn L. Quin, William Grant Still: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 193. 
4.  Judith Anne Still, liner notes to William Grant Still: Piano Music, Mark Boozer, piano, Naxos 8.559210, CD, 2005.