My carillon piece, Requiescat in pace (Soliloquy on September 11^th)  will be played at 4:00 pm on Sunday, July 22nd, at House of Hope Presbyterian Church, St. Paul MN, as part of their summer carillon series. The artist is Kimberly Shafer, carillonneur of St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church in Chicago IL, and national editor of The Bulletin published by the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. She has also founded Chicago Bell Associates to promote the instrument.

My composition was written in 2003 for my September 11th  dedication recital, as the UF Century Tower Carillon was expanded to its full range of 61 bells.  Although I had already retired from UF, Laura Ellis kindly invited me to play this program.

Shafer was a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin (2002-10). While there she greatly expanded activity for the UT Kniker Carillon, for which I had played the dedication recital in 1987. Since my father, my sister, my wife Anna and I are  all “Texas Exes,” and since Austin is my home town, I now especially enjoy all these “small world” family connections.  My sister-in-law and her husband still live in south Austin; and the UT tower chime in the ’30s was the first bell instrument I had ever heard [Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel carillon was the second, when we lived in its shadow during 1941 . . .].