Programme Note
Composer's note:
“Voices of Remembrance” was written as a reliquary for three great American leaders, President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. All three men were assassinated between 1963 and 1968. The official explanations for these murders have never been congruent with the many unanswered and/or unresolved questions that remain today. The feeling that we have never been told the truth about these events in our history was a great motivating factor for the composition of this work, and helped to define the inherent quality and tenor of the piece. For many Americans the period framed by those assassinations was a time of hope shattered, of a major turning point in how Americans felt about their government. And the power and vision of these three individuals have proven in many ways stronger than death; much of the way Americans live today has been shaped by their ideas and dreams.
--Richard Danielpour