used with permission

Simply put...the success of Requiem for Peace can not be overstated.  It was an unqualified, amazing experience for everyone involved.  The final performances were extremely well received!!  I think we brought in around 6-800 audience members for each night.  The orchestra just loved performing the piece and, I think, did a respectable job considering they are high school students and not the strongest individual students of their instruments.  I would say the weakest link was probably the horn section...but other than that, they rose to the occasion and the piece and had a great deal of pride in the performances.

 

I can speak in more detail about the choir.  I have truly never...in thirty years...and now with over 32,000 rehearsals in my pocket, experienced a piece where the students wanted to study and practice endlessly.  I found myself able to do full rehearsals on Requiem without needing to make strategic shifts to keep their attention.  Strangely enough, even after they performed the work...they wanted to come back to it and rehearse more.  That speaks volumes about the quality and art in your work.  They LOVED the piece...LOVED IT!!  They found themselves enjoying the language work and the helpful tools that you made available on line were also welcomed. 

 

We had a very good choir for the piece...about 95 singers in the end.  The a cappella movements were performed by an auditioned chamber choir of 26 singers...they gave up 3 months worth of lunches to rehearse those movements and would gladly do it all again.  They were very proud of their singing...as was I! 

 

What is especially interesting to note is that this work is so cleverly written that it is very accessible for high school singers.  The repetition you create strategically in most movements really cuts down the amount of new material needed to learn and yet gives audience and performers alike a mooring post for their ears and voices.  Nicely done!! 

 

The power of the text and the sequence of movements too allows for a deep aesthetic experience beyond that of most larger choral/orchestral works.  If you think about a magnificat, te deum, or some gloria...they all offer a snapshot musically but your work is an entire film score to the human plight here on earth...what power you have created in that!!! 

 

Congratulations and thank you.  Thank you on behalf of our entire school...but most of all for how you have given every one of our performers and listeners and experience that changed them...it changed how they feel and what they know about themselves.  Art is supposed to do these things.  Your Requiem for Peace took all of us to new heights and experiences for which we cannot thank you enough!!

 

All the best,

 

Kevin