• Footprints - Jake Runestad
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Ríos de aire

Ríos de aire

  • SATB Choir, Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Percussion, Strings (at least 1.1.1.1.1)
  • c. 30:00
  • Commissioned by Texas State Unviersity


*Available after the world premiere on November 16, 2025*


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About

 

 Humberto Ak’abal was one of the most important poetic voices from Latin America. A member of the K’iche’ Mayan community in Guatemala, he wrote with honesty, intensity, and passion — an art of protest, of truth-telling, and a deeply-felt expression of the human condition.

I came to know Humberto’s poetry through another musical project (“El Último Hilo”) which led me to visit Humberto’s home in Momostenango, Guatemala and meet his family. I will never forget walking arm-in-arm with his mother, Estebana, and noticing her hands: weathered, wrinkled, and luminous with history. In them, I felt the weight and beauty of generations, the very spirit that inhabits Ak’abal’s work. That encounter became the seed for “Footprints” (Las Huellas), a multi-movement work for choir, flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, and strings. The piece sets a cycle of Ak’abal’s poems in which ancestors appear not as distant figures of the past, but as a presence that lives on in trees, wind, water, and memory. The poems trace a path between loss and renewal, light and dark, and life and death.

Across its nine movements, “Footprints” invites us to listen for those who came before us: to hear their voices in the rustle of leaves, to feel their touch in the soil beneath our feet, and to breathe the air they once breathed.

To develop musical material, I used a cryptogram that assigns pitches to letters to spell words. For example, “ANCESTORS” is spelled with the notes A, G, C, E, E, F, A, D, E.




Instrumentation SATB Choir (div.)
Flute
Clarinet in Bb
Piano
Percussion (small triangle, Mark tree, tambourine, suspended cymbal, glockenspiel)
Strings (at least 1.1.1.1.1)
Duration 30:00
Year Completed 2025
Commissioner Texas State University. Joey Martin, Director of Choral Activities. Craig Hella Johnson, Artist in Residence.
Text Footprints (Las Huellas)
Poems by Humberto Ak'abal. 
Collected and translated by Jake Runestad, with Ricardo Garcia Gabborit.

I. A Sign (Alguna Seña)

Between the rocks,
under the bark of the trees,
in the starry nights,
in the ravines,
along the paths,
in the dreams,
in the wind,
in the water...
I find a sign of another time,
something that brings me back
to the lost voice of my elders.


II. The Sky (El Cielo)

If you clamber up an old cypress
and climb through its branches,
you will see that the earth
is not far from the sky.


III. Song (Canto)

The grandfather
leads his grandson by the hand
to greet the trees,
to talk with them,
to feel their skin,
to smell their leaves…
And the trees
sing their names.


IV. The Flute Player (La Flautista)

With her clef-curved body,
the flute player blows a kiss.
With her wind-brush she paints
a drop of tea falling into
the golden heart
of a chrysanthemum.


V. Hands (Manos)

They look
as if they were born
before she was.
Wrinkled, rough,
already distant
from the work of days past...
How they have aged,
my mother's hands.


VI. Whirlwind (Torbellino)

Suddenly
a whirlwind of fireflies
came fleeing from the gorge
as if they had seen
a ghost,
and behind them
only darkness.


VII. Buried (Enterrado)

I wept for my father
during his wake,
I wept when the coffin went out of the house
on the way to the cemetery
and there I said goodbye.
I mourned,
and when I awoke as an orphan,
I saw myself alone and understood
that to live
I needed to leave buried with him
all the pain that could stop me
from living.


VIII. The Answer (La Respuesta)

“Open the earth
with your hands,
be filled with its scent,
raise/lift your face to the sky
and eat the wind:
that is peace"
—the grandmother answered.


IX. Footprints (Las Huellas)

Wherever you place your foot
a footprint remains:
the earth holds this memory.

Life
is the memory of death
and death
is the memory of life.
Donations A portion of the proceeds from this work will be donated to Vocalis -- a non-profit music organization in Guatemala providing opportunities for choral singing to people of all ages.