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About the Score

From the composer:
I remember watching my first grade teacher stare in horror at the tube television in our elementary school classroom as reports of Columbine High School’s deadly school shooting flooded the news. My elementary school was 20 miles north of Columbine High School; teachers all but stopped classes, gathering in the hallways in muted chaos, whispering and wondering what to do.

Paul L. Thomas wrote this poem in the week following the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. I wrote “Requiem for Youth: Meditation on Innocence” in the weeks following the devastating shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Truthfully, 20 miles is a short distance when one school attacked feels like an attack on every school. “Tragedy is often reserved for single catastrophic events, but cumulative loss is no less tragic, particularly when the lives of innocent children and teens are placed in the context of daily violence (PLT).” Paul’s poetry, haunting and unfortunately timely, serves as both a reflection and call to action.

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