Light Shines (for SATB chorus with piano)
(Duration – 8 mins.)
A secular meditation on finding hope through difficult times. Impressionistic and coloristic, this piece features textures imitating wind and raindrops, modal scales, and dramatic dynamic effects.
Light Shines grew out of a question I imagine many musicians ask during their lifetime: When confronted with hatred, darkness, violence and fear in this world – how do we continue to make music? Where do we find hope in the face of cruelty? Where do we find solace in a world filled with sadness and futility? Perhaps the answer is in music itself – in coming together with many voices to celebrate beauty, to create beauty; hoping together for better things and times to come.
Commissioned and premiered by The New York Virtuoso Singers, Harold Rosenbaum, Conductor.
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
Leonard Bernstein, 1963
Digital scores available at Music Spoke here. Please email juhibansalcomposer@gmail.com to purchase hard copies.