1. Alaska composer Philip Munger is pleased to announce the upcoming premiere of a cantata written for University of Alaska Anchorage voice professor Mari Hahn and the UAA Percussion Ensemble. The performance of 'The skies are weeping' will be at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday April 27 at the UAA recital hall.

Munger has based the seven-movement work on the motivation and death of Rachel Corrie. Corrie was a 23 year-old senior at Evergreen College in Washington state, who went to the Gaza Strip in early 2003 to work as a foreign participant for the International Solidarity Movement. She was run over twice and killed by an Israeli Defense Force bulldozer driver on March 16, 2003.

Munger has set two poems written as memorials to Corrie , one by San Francisco poet Phil Goldvarg and another by Sri Lanka poet Thushara Wijeratna. The other vocal settings are of a new poem by Alaska poet Linda McCarriston, a musical setting of the testimony of Moshe Nissim, an Israeli bulldozer driver who ran amok in the 2002 Jenin incursion, a rare complete setting of Psalm 137, and excerpts from Rachel Corrie's last e-mails to her mother.

Israel Shamir

Texts, full score and additional information for or about the new work are available by calling (907) 746-0994 or e-mailing niklake@mtaonline.net . Other information may be obtained by calling the UAA music office at 786-1595.

2. Jews go into action

Composer Philip Munger's new work "The Skies are Weeping," a cantata about the late Rachel Corrie, is scheduled for performance at the UAA Recital Hall on Tuesday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m. Munger has made the texts available to the public, including members of Anchorage's Jewish community since March 9, and questions have arisen regarding the composer's sensitivity to issues concerning Israel.

Members of the Jewish community in Anchorage are very concerned the cantata contains a very one sided, unbalanced and unfair criticism of Israel. They fear that by concentrating on homes being bulldozerred and ignoring the women and children who are being blown up by suicide bombers, the cantata is sending a wrong moral message to the community. In addition, it does not present a full and comprehensive picture of the situation in the Middle East, as the public deserves. Members of the Jewish Community feel that some of the quotes are inaccurate and taken out of context. In particular, the quote from the book of Psalms in the cantata, which has seemingly been twisted with an anti-semetic flavor.

Among other texts in question is a new poem by Anchorage poet Linda McCarriston, titled "God the Synecdoche in His Holy Land i.m. Rachel Corrie." After receiving criticism from the Jewish Community who felt strongly that the cantata is inappropriate in its current text, Mr. Munger met early this past week with Rabbi Yosef Greenburg of Congregation Shomrei Ohr-Chabad and the Lubevitch Jewish Center of Alaska to discuss the matter. They have organized a public meeting for Thursday, April 8 at 7:30 p.m. at the University of Alaska Anchorage Arts Building, Room 124.

At that time, Munger will present a talk, "Writing the Skies are Weeping," a video statement by Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, and welcome questions from the community about the work.

Rabbi Yosef Greenburg
Philip Munger

3. email from Shamir to Philip

Dear Philip,
our blessings from the Holy Land for your great achievement! We hope you will be able to tour Israel/Palestine with your cantata. Now, we can't understand what is the connection between Alascan Jews and the tragic death of Rachel Corrie? She was not murdered by an Alascan Jew; nobody yet held the Alascan Jews responsible for her death – why did they decide to protect the murderers? I think it is very much in the best interests of Alascan Jews to downplay their connection to the murderous Zionist regime. It is particularly odd that a marginal Habad sect entered the fray. Habad sectants are well known as vicious Goy-haters who support uprooting of all non-Jews, ethnic cleansing or mass genocide in the Holy Land. Habad is strictly against all peace plans and proposals, and its leaders made a religious fatwa calling never to 'surrender' any land in Palestine to any Goy. The best known Habad leader in Israel Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg (or Ginsburgh) said in interview to the Jewish Week that a non-Jew can't be murdered, like an animal can't be murdered: it can be only 'killed', while the word 'murder' preserved for Jews only. Disregard the opinion of these hateful people who are strictly enemies of peace! They stand for everything Rachel Corrie fought against. Israel Adam Shamir
Jaffa

4. More whining from an Alaska Jew to Phillip Munger:

It has taken me a while to get over to gather my thoughts and feelings after hearing the powerful music of your cantata—even as a midi playback without the words it was all I could do to keep myself from weeping. Such a powerful empathetic expression of oppressive cruelty!

But it is precisely the power of your compositional mastery that frightens me most of all, for you have chosen to glorify a dangerously misguided young girl who offered herself as a human shield for those who wish to kill me, and who raise their children to give their lives to mercilessly murder my sisters, brothers and their innocent children. Where is their cantata?

You calculatingly set the words of a swaggering braggart who, as far as I can see did not actually kill anyone, much less Rachel Corrie, in this cantata, which immediately creates an emotional atmosphere of hero and villain. Indiscriminate villifying is not peacemaking, especially when you choose to represent only a small slanted view of a gestalt the includes incessent lifetime education to murderous hatred. Can you compare a bulldozing braggart to a young little-more-than-a child who straps on bombs and nails and tears apart the lives of busloads of mothers and babies, fathers, sons, daughters? where are the voices of these dead in your cantata? Did Rachel Corrie hear their voices?

I always get a sick feeling when North Americans and Europeans blind themselves to the real lives destroyed until one of their own gets involved. You see this in movies all the time—can't sell anything about Indonesia, Africa, Peru unless you've got a hot white movie star mucking around in the"other's" violence. Rachel Corrie fits the bill.

I am also frightened by the texts' Judaizing of Rachel. I don't know if she was actually Jewish or not, but she would not be the first Jew to betray her people to do the "right" thing. Many of my coreligionists will go to extraordinary lengths to be kind to our enemies. History has shown this error again and again. My belief is that in 2000 years of exile (pogroms, inquisitions, humiliations upon humiliations, holocaust…), we have become like adult children of abuse—I think you know the type—those who live their lives wondering why they keep recreating the same abusive relationships. I myself, raised in a life of priviledge in free democratic America, for years felt fear, and even an inexplicable secret shame, in identifying myself as a Jew.

Rachel Corrie volunteered to be a human shield for the houses (not even the human lives) of terrorists sworn to kill me and all those like me. She was no friend to the Jews.

Phil, I realize that this project has struck a deep emotional chord in you, and that your intentions are to create an outcry against hatred and injustice, and that your empathy for the victims of violence in the Holy Land is sincere and heartfelt. However I believe that the selective choices you have made, and the masterfully powerful emotional expression thereof, create the very distortions that lead to villification of the State of Israel, who is trying desperately to defend her people, my people, from horrifying random murder.

In all my years in Alaska, you have been so amazingly generously supportive of me and my music, in so many ways that I could never repay you. I have always admired your courage to face controversy and to express yourself freely, honestly, and with a hearfelt goodness, energy and integrity. Even more than your continued dedication to your music, it is this integrity, I think, that I most respect and envy in you.

It pains me terribly to publically oppose the performance of your cantata, which, without a doubt in my mind, contains the most masterful, powerful composing I have ever heard from you. But I don't think that I'm doing you any favors, as a friend, letting this slide by. I personally wouldn't have been able to handle the dissonance.

Your friend,
Markus Bishko
markus@alaska.net
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5. And here is some Jewish bite:

From: "Jeff Pezzati" <jpezzati@hotmail.com> Date: April 6, 2004 3:52:05 AM ADT
To: pfpam@uaa.alaska.edu
Subject: for Philip Munger

Hello Philip,
My name is Jeff Pezzati, I am a professor of composition at the University of Southern California. My pieces have won ASCAP, BMI prizes and the Prix di Rome. I have been informed of your anti-Semitic cantata that is to be performed. This will not be tolerated by the American composer community. The suicide victim "Rachel Corrie," who you are apparently trying to honor in this piece, killed herself for the cause of promoting Arab terrorism and murder against Jews. I have discussed this with such colleagues as John Corigliano, John Harbison, John Adams, etc. We have all agreed that your music is to be banned from performance in the continental United States. Consider yourself blacklisted.
-Dr. Pezzati

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The texts of the cantata:

1. Choral Prelude: Psalm 137 (King James Version) By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, "Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof."

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

2. Aria-Lament: Rachel
(For Rachel Corrie)
with the name Rachel,
she would be matriarch of the people,
those suffering a fearful life of drought,
loss of home and land,
history of ancestors
buried in heaps of disrespected earth,
she had no choice
but to follow her heart,
faith must have filled her soul,
that she could hold a child's tears
in the cup of her hand,
that her small body
would take the form of her spirit,
large enough to protect those
she felt connected to,
she risked her last breath
against the hardness of steel,
her arms
became wings of resolve,
she was the laughter of wind,
offering joy to those in lament,
this is my song to you young sister,
you have touched this world
with your strong voice
crying for justice.
Phil Goldvarg 3/18/03
Hgold42734@aol.com

3. Song: God the Synecdoche in His Holy Land i.m. Rachel Corrie Around you the father gods war. This
Father. That father. The other father.

What more dangerous place could
A woman stand, upright, than on that sand, as if She were still antiphon to that voice, the other Mind of that power. The very idea!

Crush her back in to her mother!
Crush her. Crush her. Consensus. War.
Linda McCarriston
afljm@uaa.alaska.edu

4. Recitative: I had no mercy for anybody I would erase anyone with the D-9, and I have demolished plenty. I wanted to destroy everything. I begged the officers, over the radio, to let me knock it all down; from top to bottom. To level everything. When I was told to bring down a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses. For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down. I had lots of satisfaction in Jenin, lots of satisfaction. No one expressed any reservations against doing it. Who would dare speak? If anyone would as much as open his mouth, I would have buried him under the D-9". from: www.voicesofpalestine.org/outrageous/Jenindozer.aspa

5. Song: The skies are weeping
The birds have flown away
With rain-sodden flowers in hand
I wait for you, Rachel.

The rain drops trickle
Washing the scent off the mourning tulips Pounding the healing earth
The howling winds and trembling blades of grass Calling for you, Rachel.

Dust dancing around my knees
Walling me in, and my grief
From the weeping heavens faintly at first I hear you, Rachel.

You give strength to my tears
And resolve to my limbs
As I stand up with my broken tulips
The skies are clearing
The earth is sprouting fresh blades of grass That whisper your name, Rachel.

The winds are gentle
Reassuring in their calmness
Heaven and earth rejoice today
As you're with me again, Rachel.
Thushara Wijeratna
thushw@microsoft.com

6. Chorale with soprano solo:
Rachel's Words (edited by Philip Munger) Feel sick to my stomach a lot
from being doted on all the time,
very sweetly,
by people who are facing doom.

You can always hear the tanks and bulldozers passing by.
I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house
and you and me inside.
Tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses the livelihoods for 300 people.
Then the bulldozers come and take out
people's vegetable farms and gardens.

This happens every day.

I think that I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances.

I think the word is dignity.

I wish you could meet these people.

Maybe, hopefully, someday
you will.

Philip Munger, niklake@mtaonline.net