"Red Ear of Corn" was the first Canadian score to be commissioned for the Canadian Ballet Festival. The material consists of a blend of Iroquois music, French-Canadian folk song and fiddle music. The music is meant to tell the story of why red cobs of corn can occasionally be found in the yellow corn fields of Québec. In this story, an Iroquois maiden is stabbed by the chief of her tribe, whom she was forcibly engaged to. It is said that red corn appears out of the ground where her blood was spilled.