"In Our Name"

5:37 PM Herbst Theatre. San Francisco



There have not been too many times over the past few years when the sun has set during a concert or performance. It's interesting that two of them have occurred during pieces about war. This is an excerpt from "In Our Name", Annea Lockwood's haunting and powerful setting of poems by prisoners from Guantanimo. Thomas Buckner, Theodore Mook and Annea Lockwood performed the piece at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. The excerpt on the video is from the following poem by Judah Al Dossari, entitled “Death Poem”:

Take my blood
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded

And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hand of the “protectors of peace.”

Sitting there listening brought to mind the performance of Benjamin Brittan’s “War Requiem”on August 2, 2008. The sun set during the early part of the piece where they were playing the chimes in the orchestra.