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Programme Note

Composer Note:
Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when I am listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed. I would say that Passion Prayers has urgent, seductive, and compelling qualities of sometimes complex, but always logical thought, allied to sensuous and engaging sonic profiles.

This score is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to the Network for New Music, who commissioned the work and premiered it in Philadelphia on April 11, 1999. Passion Prayers, a nine minute work formed in several sections of varying character, is an homage to the lyrical, expressive, sensitive, eloquent, and poetic qualities of Scott Kluksdahl’s playing.

I would like to express my thanks to Linda Reichert for her vision, dedication, and generosity.

— Augusta Read Thomas