"Green Hope After Black Rain (Symphony for the Survivors of Manzanar, Hiroshima and Nagasaki)"
The American composer Steve Heitzeg has created a musical piece on the Survivors of Manzanar, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had its world premier on May 8th by the St. Paul Civic Symphony in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Public Radio interview with composer Steve Heitzeg
Excerpts from the composer’s program notes, below.
“I composed Green Hope After Black Rain (Symphony for the Survivors of Manzanar, Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in honor of the survivors of the Japanese American internment camps and the A-bombed people and A-bombed trees of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The symphony is a call for peace and a protest against injustice, the atomic bomb and other weapons of mass destruction, and the insanity of war.
The score includes various natural percussion instruments such as branches, leaves, dried cherry blossoms and seed pods from A-bombed Gingko, Eucalyptus, Camphor and Cherry trees from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Taiko drum, stones from Manzanar Japanese American Internment Camp and Hiroshima, a temple bell and origami peace cranes.’
The PDF score of “Green Hope After Black Rain”