To Avielle, On Her Fifth, Sixth Birthday (The Unarmed Child)
From the large choral work, "The Unarmed Child." There's really no way to appropriately recognize your lost child's birthday, Jeremy said as he and Jennifer talked about what life has been like for their family since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took the lives of twenty children and six educators in 2012.
The Unarmed Child
The Unarmed Child by composer Michael Bussewitz-Quarm is a gorgeous, riveting, deeply moving and important work that is thoroughly accessible at the very first listening. Composed in response to gun violence against children, the work sensitively navigates this difficult, heart-wrenching subject with beautiful, poignant, healing words and music. Each movement deals with a different aspect of emotion in a uniquely expressive way. One cannot get through the experience without tears. But the vibrant final movement releases the audience and performers with an energized call to action that is infused with hope. - Dr. Diane Retallack, Artistic Director, Eugene Concert Choir.
Requiem (The Unarmed Child)
Part hip hopera, part choral, this work challenges the audience to listen to the families of the victims of gun violence. This is an impassioned plea to take a stand against not only gun violence, but to take a stand for under-represented communities who experience a disproportionate level of violence resulting from a variety of factors playing out in contemporary society. Extracted from the larger work "The Unarmed Child" this stand-alone third movement is for tenor soloist with a mixture of sung and rapped lines and dramatic choir reinforcement.
Come to Me in the Silence of the Night (The Unarmed Child)
Written in response to the gun violence against children, this penultimate movement from "The Unarmed Child" is deeply moving and brings a sense of healing and poignancy in the musical setting.
Bird on a Wire (The Unarmed Child)
Bird on a Wire was inspired by our mockingbird neighbors whose nest was emptied of its babies one sad, spring night. The parents continued guarding their nest for another week or so, perching high on a telephone wire overhead, and I thought, "That is exactly how all our lives were suspended when we lost Cameron." He did not die by violence, other than the violence disease does on a little boy's body; but seeing what my sweet sister-and-brother-in-law went through changed the way I see things: Sandy Hook, Syria, and the poisoning of children in Flint. Words cannot describe the unimaginable loss of losing a child; still I hope these words help people understand that the world cannot bear to lose even one more... not to disease, not to neglect, and certainly not to violence. - Shantel Sellers, lyricist
Lux Aeterna (The Unarmed Child)
Extracted from the larger work, this stand-alone movement honors those we have lost in mass shootings. Lux Aeterna means "eternal light", but cast within the larger scope of the Requiem, it shines a light on the names of cities affected by mass shootings in the aleatoric section. Finally, it resolves into an expression of peace and light highlighted by a soprano solo.