“Play me some mountain music.”

                                   – Alabama

Matthew Lien is getting set to head for the hills.

The veteran Yukon musician received a $125,000 grant from the territorial government as part of the Yukon’s 125th anniversary celebrations.

His project, called the Kluane Compositions, will see him fly a piano to various mountain locations around the Kluane region to shoot a music video.

His prize was the largest of the grants handed out by the government last year during the celebrations.

For Lien, it’s a passion project going back 40 years.

He spoke to The Yukon Star on Tuesday about the project.

“Today, this piano gets packed up and moved to Haines Junction at the airport,” Lien explained as he waited for a moving team to arrive. “It will sit there for about a month before we airlift it over a three-day period to three locations within Kluane National Park in some of the most extreme areas.”

The locations include the ice field at the foot of Mount Logan, the mountains beside Kathleen Lake and possibly the Cathedral glacier, Lien said.

The work will culminate in a 10-minute production he called “epic.

“This is to celebrate Indigenous culture and history within that region and the park itself, the wilderness that is there.”

Lien explained he grew up in the area around the park, and four decades ago, he had the idea for the production.

“Forty years ago, I had this idea as a budding musician, I had this idea that I could make a music video about Kluane Park. I thought if I airlifted a piano into the park, my career would be set.”

Not surprisingly, that didn’t turn out the way Lien had envisioned.

“So I planned to record this glorious orchestral version of a song I had written about Kluane and I approached the park superintendent and the Haines Junction council,” he recalled. “It was all greenlit, and I got a grant to record the song.

“When I got the recording finished, I thought my career was finished. I hated the result. It sounded more like the celebration of a Mexican restaurant than it did a national park,” he said.

“There was no way I was gonna immortalize that song with a music video. So it sat on ice for 40 years,” Lien said, making an unintentional pun.

When the government announced its plans for the 125th anniversary celebrations, he brushed four decades of dust off his concept and looked at it with fresh eyes.

“Now here we are actually moving the piano.”

Lien said the logistics of moving pianos isn’t as daunting as you might think. They’re more portable than it seems, and, with the proper planning and help, not as difficult as you think.

Moving an assembled piano by helicopter is another thing.

“It’s a problem we still need to solve.”

Lien said the project is already over-budget, and the money from the grant is gone.

He was scrounging for more funds as he spoke.

“You’ll have to stay tuned to The Yukon Star to find out more,” he said with a wink.

Public reaction to the project has generally been favourable, he said, with only a few cynics wondering why the government is spending money on it.

“If you want to go down that road, you’ll have to take on every funding agency for every Canadian film product or music video that gets done. The budget for this project does not eat into other funding.”

Lien said he wants to use the project to inspire people as to the importance of nature to culture in general.

“I think it will be an incredible tourism promotion for the territory and for Kluane. As a person who grew up out there, I’ve never understood why most Canadians don’t know anything about the park. It’s the highest mountains in Canada and it remains sort of this secret gem.

“It’s baffling to me.”