The Skies are Weeping

Great memento of Skies are Weeping - only £2.50

2005-11-16T15:12:00.000Z

The programme for the event is now on sale. As well as full details of the performers and pieces, there are thoughtful short essays by those who are working for peace, including Joe Carr, ISM volunteer and an eye-witness to the deaths of Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall and Jeff Halper, Coordinator, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
Ruth Tenne, an Israeli, writes on

Eyad El Sarraj - Director, Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reflects

and more. PLUS full text of the five wonderful and touching poems that Gregory Youtz set to music in The Singer of Wind and Rain. Here's one example:

All for £2.50, post and packing is included. Please send cheques, payable to 'The Skies are Weeping' or Postal Orders, to our Treasurer at PO Box 34265, London NW5 2WD.

Skies are Weeping event triumphs

2005-11-03T10:06:00.000Z

A few shots to remember a great event. But we still need £1,500. Please help us to complete the project. All contributions welcomed. Please send cheques, payable to 'The Skies are Weeping' or Postal Orders, to our Treasurer at PO Box 34265, London NW5 2WD. All contributions most gratefully received.

Cindy Corrie introducing the event.

Peter Crockford conducting the Coro Cervantes in The Singer of Wind and Rain, five songs on Palestinian poems, by Gregory Youtz.

Some of the Al-Hurriyya Dance Group caught as the group line-danced the traditional Palestinian Dabka.

Tsivi Sharrett adding the piano to the TS Ensemble playing
Near Eastern songs and music
fused with Jazz.

Deborah Fink, soprano soloist, backed by the
London Percussion Ensemble, singing the cantata
The Skies are Weeping, by Philip Munger.

The audience in the Hackney Empire on November 1 was moved, delighted and drawn in to the music and dance as The Skies are Weeping event unfolded. From the opening whispered lament of The Singer of Wind and Rain, through the excitingly different jazz fusion with Near Eastern music of Tsivi Sharrett and the TS Ensemble and the joyous exuberance of the Al-Hurriyya Dance Group to the atmospheric The Skies are Weeping cantata, we joined emotionally with singers and dancers from different cultures and backgrounds, in harmony and peace.

The Skies are Weeping Project thanks all who took part, the patrons and supporters, the Hackney Empire and, not least, the wonderful audience. Please help that little bit more, with a contribution to the project costs.

Please send cheques, payable to 'The Skies are Weeping' or Postal Orders, to our Treasurer at PO Box 34265, London NW5 2WD. All contributions most gratefully received.

Our patrons say...

2005-10-15T11:08:00.000+01:00

Some quotes from our patrons about why they support Skies are Weeping.

Professor Noam Chomsky

“Rachel Corrie was a young woman of rare courage and integrity, who risked her life to protect victims of savage destruction and brutality. Her heroic actions have all the more meaning for Americans because of our direct participation, unwitting or not, in the crimes she gave her life to prevent. She should be remembered, and honored, by all decent people, and should be a constant inspiration to them to do what they can to defend the principles that she upheld.”

Dr. Ilan Pappe

“One hopes that music, as much as words and pictures, would alert the world to the daily crimes against humanity that are taking place in Palestine. Rachel Corrie witnessed these crimes, reported them and died while trying to stop them. The cantata is not only in her memory, but also a reminder of her legacy: to continue the international struggle against the occupation until peace arrives in the torn land of Palestine and Israel. Yours, Ilan Pappe”

Professor Avi Shlaim

“The World Premiere of the cantata for Rachel Corrie is an event of great symbolic significance and a fitting tribute to a young woman of exceptional courage and dedication. One of the most monstrous aspects of Israeli policy in the occupied territories is the demolition of the homes of Palestinian families. Rachel took sides in this hopelessly unequal conflict between the occupiers and the occupied, between the oppressors and the oppressed. She was on the side of the underdog. Indeed, she sacrificed her life in defence of Palestinian rights against brutal Israeli aggression. In doing so, she set an example for the rest of us and she helped to keep alive the hope that justice for the Palestinians will prevail in the end. Best wishes, Avi.” Professor of International Relations, St Antony's College, Oxford

Miriam Margolyes

“I support the event because I think what happened to Rachel was wrong — and I - who am a proud Jew - am not proud when we do wrong.”

Clare Short

"I am supporting the World Premiere of the cantata for Rachel Corrie because there has been the usual campaign to silence even a cantata to commemorate a young woman who gave her life in order to stand for justice. I also believe that US backing for Israeli policies of expansion of the Israeli state and oppression of the Palestinian people is the major cause of bitter division and violence in the world. Best wishes. Clare Short MP"

John Pilger

"The Skies are Weeping concert is important because it is about an individual's right to life and the right of all of us to freedom, nothing more, nothing less, and we should support it."

Congratulations to Harold Pinter for Nobel Prize

2005-10-15T10:56:00.000+01:00

We are delighted that our patron, Harold Pinter, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His work is not only of the highest literary merit, but incisively tackles major political issues. Art — literary, dramatic, musical, visual — can make make a difference. Harold Pinter's work brings disturbing insight into human behaviour in the political environment. But without such insight, little will change and improve. We hope that Skies are Weeping, in its own way, can also help to make a difference for the better.

Great news - great support!

2005-09-20T17:40:00.000+01:00

As well as the Arts Council and the Holst Foundation, we are delighted that we have also kindly been offered grants or donations by the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and Jennifer Loewenstein's Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and Musicians Against Nuclear Arms. Jews for Justice for Palestinians is sponsoring Al Hurriya, the Palestinian Dabka dance group, who will be performing. Many thanks. And special thanks to Cindy Corrie who will be introducing the concert.
Please buy tickets, come and see and hear wonderful words and music, make a donation or help us spread the word.

Thank you Arts Council and the Holst Foundation

2005-09-16T10:13:00.000+01:00

We are very grateful to the Arts Council and the Holst Foundation for giving us grants to help us put on the concert. But we still do need more money. Please help by donating or buying tickets. Any surplus funds from donations and tickets will be given to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.
Please send cheques, payable to 'The Skies are Weeping' or Postal Orders, to our Treasurer at PO Box 34265, London NW5 2WD. All contributions most gratefully received. Tickets from the Hackney Empire, London.

Programme update

2005-08-16T09:20:00.000+01:00

We are delighted that the concert will also include:

The UK premiere of The Singer of Wind and Rain, five Palestinian lyrics for mixed choir, set by Gregory Youtz, 2000. Gregory Youtz was born in 1956 in Beirut, Lebanon and received his musical education in the USA, where he now lives, composing and teaching.

Palestinian music and dance, performed by Al-Hurriyya Palestinian Dabka Dance Group. Its members come from Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and the UK. Although very new, it has had growing success in the UK, including the WOMAD Festival in Reading, and various street festivals in London. Its aim is to introduce Palestinian traditional dance to wider audiences in the UK.

The Tsivi Sharrett Ensemble. Led by the multi-talented Israeli Tsivi Sharrett, it finds inspiration in Yemenite, Israeli and Palestinian songs fused with jazz. The Ensemble has performed in a variety of venues in the UK, including the Jazz Café and at the South Bank Festival.

Five Songs on Palestinian Poems

2005-08-08T22:25:00.000+01:00

Gregory Youtz has provided the following programme notes for his work The Singer of Wind and Rain: Five Songs on Palestinian Poems. Like the Jews, Palestinians have produced a remarkable number of gifted intellectuals, artists and writers over the centuries. Like the Jews, Palestinians have suffered under many foreign rulers and been described in the most negative stereotypical ways by a world that does not know them. Somehow, both cultures have managed to keep alive their identity, their culture and their ability to imagine beauty amid the pain of war and pogrom.
These poems represent a tiny slice of the powerful poetry created by modern Palestinian poets in the last fifty tumultuous years. These are voices rarely heard in the West, voices that must be heard if the terrible struggle in "The Holy Land" is ever to cease. These poems may serve to remind us of just how strongly a people can hold on to their identities and their hopes and their dreams.
The poems are drawn from the "Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature" edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, published by Columbia University Press. All translations are used by permission of the editor.

Please support this concert

2005-08-06T10:24:00.000+01:00

The Skies are Weeping had to be withdrawn from its premiere in Alaska due to safety concerns for the student performers. The composer and soprano had received email and telephone threats. Music can and should deal with controversial topics. This work is the only known major classical piece to have been written about these events, or, probably, about the second intifada.

We are sure that you will feel that the music should be heard, free from prejudiced attack. In the belief that British society is more tolerant, we are now asking you to support the concert by buying tickets or donating. Surplus funds from donations and tickets will be given to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. Please send cheques, payable to 'The Skies are Weeping' or Postal Orders to our Treasurer at PO Box 34265, London NW5 2WD. All contributions most gratefully received.

Text to 'The Skies Are Weeping', a cantata by Philip Munger

2005-08-01T13:43:00.000+01:00

(Text published: April 25, 2004)

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. Dance for Tom Hurndall (no lyrics)

3. 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 -- March 18, 2003)

4. Song: God the Synecdoche in His Holy Land, in memoriam 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)

5. 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. Iwanted 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."
(Extract from the Gush Shalom translation of an interview in Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 2002.)

6. 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)

7. 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 had 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 circumstances.
I think the word is dignity.
I wish you could meet these people.
Maybe, hopefully, someday
you will.

Our Patrons

2005-07-06T12:21:00.000+01:00

We welcome our latest patrons, all highly distinguished in their fields and internationally known.

Professor Noam Chomsky. Professor of Linguistics, Linguistic Theory, Syntax, Semantics and Philosophy of Language, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Noam Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Known for controversial and biting insights, scourge of the Establishment, espcially in the USA.

Harold Pinter, playwright, poet, polemicist and now patron. Alliteration can take us no further.

Dr. Ilan Pappe. Still a senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University, he is one of the most controversial of the Israeli "new historians". His writings, based on access to material recently released by the British and Israeli archives, have started to undermine what he terms myths about the foundation and early years of the Israeli state.

John Pilger. An Australian, he has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Now based in London, continues with fearless journalism and documentaries.

Richard Eyre. Knight of the theatre, artistic director of the Royal National Theatre for ten years, now brilliant at films, also author, lecturer...Whatever he does, he leaves his inimitable mark.

Professor Avi Shlaim. Supreme internationalist, born in Baghdad, dual Israeli/British citizen and Professor of International Relations and Professorial Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford University. A new historian, he has published extensively on the Middle East. A recent book is The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

Roger Lloyd Pack. A man of many, many parts, seen on the big screen and the little screen, rubbing shoulders with Harry Potter and the Vicar of Dibley. One of our busiest and best-regarded actors, but with time for other things as well.

Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and writer. Visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Dare we mention Fat is a Feminist Issue?

Julie Christie. Dr. Zhivago would have been enough. In fact her successes went on and on, including an Oscar for Darling. On-screen magnetism goes along with off-screen thoughtfulness that leads her to campaign for social issues she feels deeply about.

Dr Jane Manning, leading contemporary soprano, founder of Jane´s Minstrels and campaigner for British music. And clearly not just British music.

Anthony Payne, who has enjoyed a rich and productive career as a composer and music critic. Known world-wide for his acclaimed realisation of Elgar´s 3rd. symphony.

Clare Short, outspoken Member of Parliament, heart always in the right place, great for international development.

Baroness Jenny Tonge. Likes simply to be known as Dr. Jenny Tonge. Strong views, including being anti-Iraq war. Caring of the oppressed and weak.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Senior Researcher at the Foreign Policy Centre, journalist, broadcaster and leading commentator on race, multiculturalism and human rights. Author of numerous books on these subjects including the groundbreaking Foreign Policy Centre pamphlet After Multiculturalism.

Moris Farhi, MBE. Of Turkish origin, and author of acclaimed books Children of the Rainbow, Journey Through the Wilderness and most recently the excellent Young Turk.

Susannah York. Has a hugely successful career in film acting from 1960 to the present and no sign of stopping. In 1972 she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Images. Also author of two children's fantasy novels, In Search of Unicorns and Lark's Castle. CND member from way back.

Sir Anthony Sher. An actor who brings a vital difference to all his many roles. Multi-talented, he writes incisive novels and has produced a fascinating biography.

Uri Fruchtman. Israeli film producer who spiced up a film with the five Spice Girls. But also has serious Galoot (Exile), and An Ideal Husband in his credits. A member of the consortium resuscitating the Ealing Studios.

Biography of Philip Munger

2005-06-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

Philip Munger, composer of The Skies are Weeping, was born in 1946 and studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory and at the University of Washington. After working in Seattle, he has lived in Alaska since 1973.

Munger has sought to address concerns about environmental, humanitarian and social issues in a number of his compositions. He has spoken and written widely on these issues. In April, 2004, he delivered a talk in Anchorage on the humanitarian and political underpinning of his recent work, “The Skies are Weeping,” a cantata about the circumstances and political climate leading to the death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie (in the Gaza Strip in March, 2003). In June, 2005 he was invited by the Anchorage Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship to speak about The spiritual roots of my protest music.

Although The Skies are Weeping has gained notoriety - even though as yet unperformed - Munger’s protest music is quite ecumenical in subject matter. As early as 1972, Munger wrote music critical of denigration of Native American spiritual values. Recently he has written compositions critical of the Taliban, hypocrisy after September 11, 2001, the American military machine, and about blasphemies against Christianity.

He has received many prizes and other honours. His works have been performed at the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Juilliard Institute, Cornish Institute, Warsaw Conservatory, the National Gallery, the National Cathedral and several other notable venues.

His most recent award, from the service organization Bugles Across America, was in January 2005, for his composition Shards, honouring America’s Afghanistan and Iraq Wars’ dead, for which he was awarded their “For Valor” decoration.

About 'The Skies Are Weeping'

2005-05-04T16:38:00.000+01:00

The Skies are Weeping is a 32 minute cantata, Opus 75, by Philip Munger. It was written in memory of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by a bulldozer whilst trying to save Palestinian homes from demolition by Israel. The cantata is scored for soprano, chamber choir, (8-20 voices), piano and seven percussion players. The second movement of the work is dedicated to Tom Hurndall, the British peace activists, who was killed whilst protecting Palestinian children. It is the only known major classical piece to have been written about these events, or, probably, about the second intifada.

The scheduled world premiere in Alaska,in 2004, was cancelled after the soprano soloist had received death threats, and is now going to take place in the UK. You can read a full account of the events surrounding the cancellation here.

At present performers include the conductor, Peter Crockford, Deborah Fink (soprano), Dominic Saunders (pianist), the choir Coro Cervantes and the London Percussion Ensemble. The venue is the Hackney Empire, East London.

Bulldozing

2005-05-02T18:35:00.000+01:00

Bulldozer at work

About Rachel Corrie

2005-05-02T17:31:00.000+01:00

Rachel Corrie died whilst trying to prevent house demolitions in Palestine, in 2003. Find more information at her memorial website.