Description
HARDCOPY SCORE 11×17 (parts rental)
19 minutes. 3333 (or 2222) – 4431 – timp+3, pno, hp, str. narrator.
Ayers’ work tells John Brown’s story, the good and the bad, through Brown’s own words, as well as the words of two of Brown’s surviving offspring, Brown’s friend Fredrick Douglass, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who witnessed Brown’s hanging, and the widow of a man Brown ordered killed. It also quotes John Brown’s favorite hymn, Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow, and uses material from the hymn as symbolic bugle calls echoed by surround-sound trumpets.
Ayers’ JOHN BROWN “was a total knock-out. I keep hearing from people how moved they were by the music, the drama, the pacing, and the haunting ‘flash-backs’.” —Christopher Wilkins, Music Director, Akron Symphony Orch.
