VOICE is a memorized performance piece that recreates for a contemporary audience the ancient art of praise song at the harp. The story I wish to tell is perhaps one of the oldest of all stories as it begins in Sumer in the 3rd millennium B.C., in Ur, later the birthplace of Abraham. It is a story that encompasses myth from the cradle of civilization and sacred verse from the Holy lands. It is a story that gives emphasis to the themes of love and war while highlighting the voices of women, the voices of praise, faith and struggle that have come down to us from the earliest days of recorded history.

 

This story is a lament in the sense that we are obliged to mourn the loss of human life as a result of the religious intolerance of our day. Otherwise, it is my hope to reacquaint a contemporary audience with the art of praise song and to render this lament for our millennium as something of our shared inheritance as human beings.