Flag of 9/11
Responding artistically to a recent national or cultural trauma is problematic. In seeking to commemorate, the result often diminishes rather than augments our experience, simply because it can't answer to the scale and intensity of such fresh memories of the actual event.
That being said, I was moved to respond to 9/11 by focusing on a diminished image itself, the tattered 9/11 flag from the collapsing twin towers. The music is a meditation on "The Star Spangled Banner" in a kind of tattered state, falling apart, combining with "America the Beautful," collapsing in descent, yet finally rebuilding in fireworks and strong affirmation. The coda is an intentional reference/reinterpretation of the magical "Fairy Garden" from Ravel's Mother Goose Suite.