The Anchorage Civic Orchestra will present the premiere of Hindu Kush, my new orchestral work, on May 14th. The music is pretty much constructed as far as I can inside of my mind. I have about 18 minutes of it memorized, yet most of it hasn't left the inside of my head.
Hindu Kush will be my most extensive "protest work" of classical music since Two Rivers, in 2006.
Below is a set of facing pages from the score of Sphinx Island Elegy, my first credible work of protest music. It premiered in Anchorage in October 1989, and was the first serious attempt in the fine arts to express the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
It was the last big piece I wrote out by hand:
At the same time I was writing it, I was investigating the new tools available to composers through computer notation and sequencing programs. In 1990 I purchased Finale, which I figured might become a major product.
Here's a shot of progress on Bamyan Voids, the first movement of Hindu Kush. It describes the utterly stupid destruction in 2000, by Taliban adherants, of the Buddhist statues at Bamyan, at the southwest edge of the Hindu Kush.
The other movements will be Woman's Ghazal (praising Afghani women artists), Reapers and Predators (protesting automated warfare) and a Mountain Song from the eastern part of the Hindu Kush, begging God for peace.