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Beginning 2nd Section  X

by William Price

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2-3 days

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, 1963 for string orchestra

Duration: approx. 9 minutes.

Composed by William Price, for string orchestra. 1 Full Score and 1 Set of Parts. Contemporary Classical. 17 pages. 11 X 14 inches, Coil Binding and Booklet. Published by IROM Music Publishing.

Inspired by Diane McWhorter's Pulitzer Prize winning account of the struggle for civil rights that took place in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s,

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, 1963 is dedicated to civil rights leader, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

Divided into three main sections, Carry Me Home uses stark contrasts of texture and timbre to represent various public figures in the conflict for civil rights. The opening austere and brutal pizzicato section represents the unchanging "status quo" and three of the major adversaries of the movement, Birmingham Commissioner Bull Conner, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and the Klan.

Eventually subsiding, this section gives way to long lyrical melodies that represent the unwavering "voices" of change, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King, Jr., and President John F. Kennedy. Each time the unison pizzicato section tries to interrupt and silence the ascension of the legato melodies, it is interrupted by the continuing lyricism of "faith" and "change." Searching to find harmonic and textural resolution, the contrapuntal melodies culminate in the central climax of the work. In the closing minutes of the work, fragments of Alabama state song and opening pizzicato passage serve as reminders to the ongoing struggle of equality.

Commissioned by the Louisiana Sinfonietta, Carry Me Home was given its world premiere by the Conservatory of Athens in Athens, Greece on February 27 2004 and its American premiere on March 24, 2004 in Baton Rouge, LA by the Louisiana Sinfonietta.