Their Cries Removed

On May 24, 2022, a gunman armed with an AR-15 entered Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two teachers. This piece (the second of two) attempts to capture the horror of that day. The title references the now infamous "the screams of children have been removed" from the security footage.

The work begins gently, as if waking, then rolls into and through the event itself, augmenting and pounding the opening melody, transforming it into a nightmarish theme. What follows is almost hopeful, as parents await news of their children. But the hope turns to anguish, and the opening melody returns again in the mothers' keening and the fathers' haunting dissonant counterpoint. It ends almost as it began; gently, with the underlying message that nothing has changed. That nothing will ever change.

Not unless we change.