On the upcoming anniversary of 9/11, I would like to give mention of two incredible pieces of music.
Blue Man Group: Exhibit 13
This piece is on their album The Complex and is among my favorite tracks they've ever made. The inspiration for the piece was the paper scattered in the aftermath of the attack in New York. More specifically, it was a certain group of papers that fell into a neighborhood a fair distance away from the World Trade Center buildings. I recall when the video was put on the BMG website along with the explanation of the inspiration of the piece. Moreover, I remember seeing this live with the video projected over the stage. The video shows a couple pieces of paper falling at a time... a rate which increases to a dense shower, only to taper away again. Periodically, photographs of specific papers are shown in detail with rips, tears, burn marks and the like: paper recovered from the neighborhood mentioned above. It is a simple concept, but very evocative for those that watched the events unfold in person or by television.
John Adams: On the Transmigration of Souls
Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for this work, and he deserves every bit of it. The piece is potentially the only piece that I find to be consistently moving and emotionally engaging, regardless of the mood I'm in. It is for orchestra, chorus, children's choir and prerecorded tape. The text is compiled from various missing signs and posters found around New York in the aftermath of the attacks, phrases from interviews with family members who lost loved ones and names of victims. Adams used the term "memory space" for the work he created, and I experience that every time I listen to it. It is, I think, all but impossible to listen to this piece and not relive the events of that day in some way: where you were, what you were doing, when you found out, etc. I recommend this piece highly... and that you keep a box of tissues nearby when you listen.
