Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra & Bramwell Tovey – Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation (Live) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:00:50 minutes | 535 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Centrediscs

Most of us, certainly those of us in North America, experience war from a safe distance, through what we see on television and read in the media, while the reality of war happens far away. Poet Suzanne Steele, however, gained a unique firsthand perspective on war. As Canada’s first War Poet, Steele joined the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in 2009 during the war in Afghanistan, documenting her experiences in her poetry and at warpoet.ca. She saw the fear, the belief, and the sacrifice. She met people who did not come home alive. She met people who did come home, but broken, to a life shattered by post-traumatic stress disorder. She met their families, mourning, powerless. Her writings and experiences–stories we do not see on television or read in the media–provide the foundation for this hour-long concert work with music by Canadian composer Jeffrey Ryan.

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