Traces (Piano/Full Score)

Since the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria and the subsequent government crackdown, which was the catalyst for the current civil there, all of my concert music works have reflected on that situation. Traces, which is the largest work in this series, is a meditation on loss: both the loss of people and infrastructure as well the loss of a sense of place and connection that one has with a place. On the formal level, Traces takes its title and inspiration from a genre of pre-Islamic poetry that often begins with the poet and his companions returning to a desert campsite where his beloved lives only to find that the camp has been broken and all its inhabitants have moved to another site that is unknown to the poet. All that is left behind are al-atlaal or traces, of the site”s former in habitants. Arguably, the most famous of this genre of poetry is Al-Mua”llaqa by Imru” al-Qyas (d. 542 A.D.).