Wounded Children

Description

Piano — Children starving in Africa. Children bombed and gassed in Syria, and abducted in Nigeria. Children beaten, battered, and caged in America. Abusing children is a universal activity. The easiest thing for an adult to do is to abuse a child. Often the abusers were wounded children themselves. The vicious circle continues.The direct impetus for writing this piece is the caging of immigrant children in the southwest part of the United States of America. My country. My Homeland. These children were separated from their parents without any tracking system for reuniting parents with their children. The children will bear the scars of their internment for the rest of their lives.Some of these small pieces bear a tinge of sadness or regret, even anger. But not all. Some reflect the playfulness that should be natural to childhood. And some reflect the tenderness that every child deserves. Some are prayers. Moved by the plight of children all over the world, but especially by the plight of children caged and separated from their families at the border, Adolphus Hailstork composed WOUNDED CHILDREN, a suite of 13 interconnected, untitled short movements that may be heard as one 30-minute fabric, yet the individual movements also stand on their own. In the composer's own words: “Children starving in Africa. Children bombed and gassed in Syria, and abducted in Nigeria. The direct impetus for writing this piece is the caging of immigrant children in the southwest part of the United States of America. My country. My Homeland. These children were separated from their parents without any tracking system for reuniting parents with their children. The children will bear the scars of their internment for the rest of their lives.”