LOOKING WEST to Bring Cowboy Songs to MUSE/IQUE at Huntington, Skirball
Rachael Worby leads the MUSE/IQUE Orchestra with Damon Daunno, Raye Zaragoza and Glynn Turman.
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MUSE/IQUE will present LOOKING WEST: How the Myth of the Western Frontier Got its Start, led by Artistic & Music Director Rachael Worby with Damon Daunno, Raye Zaragoza, Glynn Turman, and the MUSE/IQUE Orchestra. There are four performances presented between August 25 and 30, 2026 at — and in partnership with — The Huntington and Skirball Cultural Center.
How did the cowboy become one of the defining, most aspirational, most romanticized symbols of American culture? It's a symbol of freedom and of self-invention — and it spread, in part, through the uniquely mythologizing power of music. The “cowboy songbook” is composed of both authentic traditional songs born on the range by real cowboys, as well as Broadway showtunes, popular songs and film scores that all equally responded to and created the legend, the idea, of this Western hero. Music forged the myth.
LOOKING WEST is a musical map of that expansive frontier — a journey into the myth and the reality alike. The cowboy song became a genre unto itself, influenced by folk tunes from the Old World and developed under starry skies on lonesome nights. Home-cooked traditional songs like “Home on the Range” and “Happy Trails” were popularized by real cowboys (Gene Autry) and self-made cowboys (Roy Rogers). The tradition migrated to the stage in popular musicals like Oklahoma!, and it was carried on by rock bands like the Eagles (“Desperado”) and folk troubadours like Bob Dylan with his 1973 hit “Knockin' On Heaven's Door” — written, naturally, for a Hollywood picture (Peckinpah's “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”).
California's Dream Factory, which truly codified the myth of the American West, yielded countless songs of roundups, rustlers and homes on the range, as well as stirring orchestral landscapes of the West, like Elmer Bernstein's “The Magnificent Seven.” The rest of the world was captivated by these myths and responded with their own distinctive voice, iconically so with “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” and the Italian westerns, with their iconoclastic scores, by Ennio Morricone. The cowboy is a myth that continues to inspire everyone from the Sons of the Pioneers to Beyoncé. The sound of the West is a frontier claimed by all, and its music is the stuff of legend.
Featuring the vibrant vocals of Damon Daunno, Tony Award nominee for his performance as Curly in the Broadway remounting of Oklahoma! and Raye Zaragoza, whose album “Hold That Spirit” embodies her proud claim that the great Western songbook has roots in Mexican and Indigenous cultures. As she declares: “We were cowboys too!” Cowboy poetry and spoken word will be performed by Glynn Turman, the Emmy-winning veteran of stage and screen and a real-life cowboy! — all backed by a murderer's row band, featuring Gabe Witcher on fiddle, Mike Witcher on Dobro, Andrew Synowiec on guitar, Ross Garren on harmonica and Alan Hampton on bass.
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