Copper Over Navy (IMS Sidequest)

Episode 83-Copper Over Navy (IMS Sidequest)
A Blue Dress and Blue Walls
This episode aired September 23, 2025

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[ Music: “Free the Heel,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

I’m Shannon Heaton, flute player and host of Irish Music Stories, the show about traditional music. And the bigger stories behind it.

This is an IMS Sidequest in which I map the music from my Perfect Maze album, and I share excerpts from a few stories that helped me restart the project after a series of setbacks.

[ Music: “Apian Army” (intro) from Perfect Maze

Composer: Shannon Heaton

Artists: Shannon Heaton & Friends ]

The music on Perfect Maze is inspired by networks of pollinators: bees, butterflies. And by a colony of flute, string, and piano players. The first track on the album is my Blue Dress Suite, which is an extension of my Blue Dress Waltz which I wrote back in 2010.

[ Music: “Blue Dress Waltz,” from Blue Dress

Composer: Shannon Heaton

Artists: Shannon Heaton & Maeve Gilcrhirst ]

I first recorded Blue Dress with harpist Maeve Gilchrist. We played this sweet melody in A Major written for an incredibly well-made dress from the late 1950s. It’s got this durable satin base that will not rip apart. And the whole thing is covered in a light airy layer of blue lace. It’s strong. And delicate.

The melody’s in waltz time. And it sits easily on flute and harp—and fiddle, accordion. You know, I wrote it as a traditional-style tune I could play with other Irish players.  But it caught the ear of some classical players. So I leaned in and developed the music for flute and string quartet (I also have an arrangement for flute, viola, and cello, which is one of my favorite combos).

[ Music: “Blue Dress Waltz,” from Perfect Maze

Composer: Shannon Heaton

Artists: Shannon Heaton & Friends ]

I wrapped the tune around a short song inspired by Robert Frost’s Dust of Snow. I called my song Winter’s First Snow. It’s basically about how dark, heavy feelings and worry can lift a little with just a bit of good news. About how we humans can carry around sadness and also find some peace.

Music swells:

When winter’s first snow

Settles softly on the trees

A parcel of crows casts a shadow on me

Some weight of my heart

May fade away

With bright and dark, side by side this day

I like the words. But I think the melody is comforting, even as an instrumental. (That’s how I published the sheet music, to make it more accessible for all the flute players.)

[ Music: “Pound the Floor,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

And to make it accessible for ME to try to see shadows and light. To try to step back. This is a work in progress. So thinking of the Winter’s First Snow melody has been this reminder to try to summon perspective when I first hear bad news.

Like.. in December 2023, Israel was ramping up retaliatory bombing of the Gaza Strip.

And things were also heating up in the United States.

The political rhetoric was getting ugly. Anti immigrant. Anti trans people. Anti education. Anti environment.

I read about people around the world facing water and food and energy scarcity; and about billionaires amassing even more money, more media outlets, more power.

And I saw  people—everyday working people—were cheering for a man who said “the oceans will rise, and who the hell cares.”

What a weird mess.. What a murder of worries. What a disquiet winter.

[ Music: “D Modal Groove,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

But it was quiet in the woods. In our local Middlesex Fells Reservation, while missiles dropped 5500 miles away, tufts of snow blanketed the trees.

While politicians ranted and threatened migrants and refugees, orange butterflies were migrating to Mexico to seek refuge in the Oyamel Fir forests. I thought of Winter’s First Snow—my reminder to notice sparks of light, to see blue and gold and to summon some patience.

[ Music: “Blue to Gold,” from Perfect Maze

Composer/Artist: Shannon Heaton ]

Just the melody was enough to get me back into the moment in the woods. And back into music. I nestled the Winter’s First Snow as an instrumental into the flute duet I’d been writing. I called the piece Blue to Gold.

I called “Blue to Gold” a “Conveyance” for two flutes. Because, really, just two flutes can convey worlds of music. The timbres, the overtones and breaths, the rhythmic pulses all convey stories. They can carry music through different sections. They can transport.

I wrote Blue to Gold for my friend Hatao. His full name is Tomoaki Hatakeyama. He’s a fine flute player in Osaka.

And for another exceptional musician—for the wonderful Chicago flutist Mary Stolper—I arranged Blue Dress and Winter’s First Snow for flute and piano.

[ Music: “Blue Dress Suite for Flute & Piano,” from Perfect Maze

Composer: Shannon Heaton

Artits: Mary Stolper & Deborah Emery ]

Mary recorded this with Deborah Emery on piano. It’s really nice duet playing. It’s exciting for me to share my Irish style melody in a way that celebrates and encourages the rich, concert music approach.

[ music swells ]

That was Mary Stolper and Deborah Emery a few years ago. We also recorded my Flute Duel. Can’t wait to share that one with you in a future episode.

[ Music: “Little Bird Lullaby,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

It was amazing to play with Mary and Debbie. And it was a big bummer when the Perfect Maze project stalled (Covid derailed my plans; and a few administrative challenges. And I felt a bit lost as the disheartening socio political trends swelled.

But I found my way back after writing about current events. Creative essays helped me process the updates, so I could get back to the business of making music. And though the music isn’t describing the essays, I’m not sure that you’d be hearing any of these melodies, if it hadn’t been for the stories.

That’s very Irish Music Stories of me to say—but really, behind even the simplest tunes, there’s usually a much bigger story.

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[ Music: “Aristotle’s Air,” from

Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories
Artist/Composer: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

After 43 little monkeys broke out of a primate research facility, I moved from blue to navy. And from gold to copper.

This short story is called Copper Over Navy.

When the last U.S. president was ushered in, on January 20th, 2021, two weeks after a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, I painted our living room wall. I sponged on a few different shades of blue—cornflower, cerulean, just a hint of turquoise. At the end I brushed in some metallic gold.  I was aiming for a rich, textured effect, not just a flat monotone.

That was our family’s backdrop as we inched out of the pandemic. And as our new president worked on boring legislation to help consumers and college students, to mend international alliances, to invest in science and medial research and roads, bridges and high speed internet. His “climate bill” was actually pretty short on ecology reform. But thousands of people got green tech and manufacturing jobs, especially in Southern States.

The bright blue wall was a wave of calm. It was a reminder of how things had settled after the prior guy had incited a riot to try to stay in power, how he’d told us to inject bleach if we got sick. That was before he seeped back onto the canvas and staked his claim to once again make America great again by deporting immigrants, dismantling health care and education, and by destroying the green energy program that had created all those jobs in Southern states.

Almost 60% of South Carolinians voted for him, over 65% in Edgefield County. That’s the birthplace of Strom Thurmond, the white supremacist segregationist who, at the age of 22, had a child with 16 year old Carrie Butler, one of his parents’ African American servants.

Two hours down the road, in Yemassee, South Carolina, he also received a lot of support. That’s the home of Alpha Gen, an enormous primate research facility. They supply test trials and research projects with marmosets, macaques, African Greens, and several New World species. Lots of moving parts, including a group of 50 young female rhesus monkeys.

The day after America elected a president who’d been found liable for sexual assault, 43 of those 50 female monkeys walked out a door that the caretaker had forgotten to secure. Seven stuck with the system that promised them treats and toys. That’s 14% of primate voters.

The escaped monkeys eluded capture for days. They taunted their jailers, just a few yards from the property. They jumped around the outside fence. It took time and peanut butter sandwich bribes. But Alpha Gen did manage to recapture most of the monkeys. But four remained on the loose.

Then on November 25th, 22 inmates from a different group of long-tailed macaques suffocated in the building after a diesel heater malfunctioned.

The final four fugitives remained on the lam through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. The holdouts stuck it out til January 24th, after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Inauguration Day, and after Alpha Gen filed their quarterly taxes. They received 19 million dollars in taxpayer funding that year, even though they don’t follow regulations for public safety or animal welfare.

When the monkeys burned up, and when Alpha Gen’s CEO told animal rights activists to “go f themselves,” and when the reinstated orange president spoke of his plans to downsize the Health Institutes and promote directors who have been critical of restrictions and safety protocols, I looked at that bright blue, hopeful wall. And then I covered it with a much deeper hue. Something that doesn’t run completely counter to the current mood. Something to mark this new, darker chapter. I went with a rich navy, the traditional, conventional color of authority. I swirled in copper accents for balance.

It all looks great by candlelight. So my family can weather a few chilly seasons with this regal background. We’ll play some board games and eat some peanut butter sandwiches, and the seasons will continue to turn.

[ Music: “Bow for Rama,” from Perfect Maze

Composer: Shannon Heaton ]

Thanks for listening to my tales of blue walls and blue tunes. Hope you’ll come back for the next Irish Music Stories Sidequest, for a cycle of words and music for the orange and black monarch, the butterfly that gets its name from an historic orange king, Old William of Orange.

To order copies of the Perfect Maze CD… or to order sheet music for Blue Dress, Blue to Gold, or any of the pieces on the album.. just head to shannonheatonmusic.com.