On October 21, 1966, in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales, a man-made mountain of coal waste collapsed on a primary school and nearby houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults.
Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children
By Ceri Jackson, BBC News
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.
Image courtesy South Wales Police Museum, 1966
“My unpublished works cried out that they wanted to live.” (The Oak and the Calf: A Memoir, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
This past month, I received word that Aberfan would be awarded a grant, enough to go back into the studio and continue recording. Been a long time. I wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise. A tremendous gift, tangible and intangible.
Aberfan is an expression of the collective unconscious of our time. A psychological and spiritual rendering as much as a musical one, it is an excavation into my own soul. Propelling itself through me, Aberfan is the story of power and destruction wrought over all the world in the willful, negligent and unconscious devastation upon what is most vulnerable in ourselves and in others, and the practice of transforming what cannot be fathomed through my music.
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.
There is music: 
Love Flows Like the Blood of a River
Laura Siersema Trio Live at 1794 Meetinghouse
Take care, all…Laura
The creative artist is an outlier.
“…the work of an artist meets the psychic needs of the society in which she lives, and therefore means more than her personal fate, whether she is aware of it or not. Being essentially the instrument of her work, she is subordinate to it, and we have no right to expect her to interpret it for us. She has done her utmost by giving it form and must leave the interpretation to others and to the future. A great work of art is like a dream…for all its apparent obviousness it…is always ambiguous. To grasp its meaning, we must allow it to shape us as it shaped her. Then we also understand the nature of her primordial experience. She has plunged into the healing and redeeming depths of the collective psyche, where man is not lost in the isolation of consciousness and its errors and sufferings, but where all are caught in a common rhythm which allows the individual to communicate her feelings and strivings to mankind as a whole.” Jung, Carl Gustav. “Psychology and Literature”, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature c 1966
“An outlier may be sometimes excluded from the data set (and) can cause serious problems in statistical analyses.” (Wikipedia)
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.
All contributions, no matter the size, are greatly appreciated.
P.S. In the quote above, I changed all pronouns from “he” and “him” to “her” and “she”.
The Trio Live album is now available on Spotify!
If you listen to music on Spotify, there’s a small thing you can do that’d be a big help: FOLLOW me there!
Once I get to 250 followers, Spotify will “verify” my account, which opens up the possibility my music can be added to their playlists.
Thank you for this support.
For anyone that uses iTunes, the new release is now up!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/laura-siersema-trio-live-at-1794-meetinghouse/id1209345086
Please take a listen and add to your playlists.
Your support is so important! Thank you.
Hooray! Our trio album, Live at 1794 Meetinghouse is available!
Billy Klock and Wim Auer played with me for three years following the release of Talon of the Blackwater in 2009. These guys gave their hearts and souls to my music. What great champions! I love them both.
Listening to these tracks over the last few weeks has been a great joy. Our last performance together was on July 8, 2012. At long last, an “official” release! Dedicated to Billy Klock and Wim Auer.
Please take a listen! Buy yourself an individual track or the whole album!
Thank you for your support.
Laura Siersema 