Digging effort, Pantglas Junior School, Aberfan, Wales, October 21, 1966
Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Please join in the effort by making your contribution here.
Photo courtesy AGU Blogosphere
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I discovered footage from the AP Archives that had no sound. Here is a shot from that 5 minutes of film taken at the mass funeral of victims of the Aberfan Disaster on 27th October 1966.
Here is a demo excerpt from my composition Aberfan, Final Hymn, “Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep”, one of two hymns sung at the service on the hillside.
Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue) is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions on behalf of Aberfan must be made payable to NYFA, and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Watching for spring to come in the many grant applications and letters sent out for Aberfan — a project at the crossroads of modern music, environmental justice, performance art, experimental media and landscape of the human soul.
Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts. In order to pull this off I need your help. Make a donation of any size here.
Aberfan articulates a broadening and deepening of artistic practice, far beyond what I’ve ever experienced, yet is inclusive of everything before it — the search, over years, for my own creative voice in composition. Propelling itself through me, Aberfan is its own whole, symbol of what is most lacking in our world, as in our families and deep within ourselves, natural expression is desecrated and buried, just as our land is leveled.
Here is an excerpt of 2 pianos from Aberfan, the aftermath of a man-made disaster, a mix of rain and rubble.
Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.
Photo IC Rapoport, Aberfan, 1966
Laura Siersema 