PRAYER by Hugh Levick Performed by Tereza Stanislav Program Notes: PRAYER, duo for silences and solo violin was NOT the original title of this piece. The original title was WRECHO which to my mind indicated the echo of a wreckage. Without changing the music I changed the title since I felt that the visceral and disjointed quality of the piece was an adequately fervent expression of my hopes for the beautiful and shredded world in which we live.

TIERRA DEL FUEGO is based on Selk’nam shamanic chants from Tierra del Fuego. The Selk’nam (also known as the Ona) as a tribe ceased to exist some decades ago.In the 1960’s Alan Lomax made a recording for his Folkways label of the tribe’s last shaman. The Selk'nam were driven to extinction some decades ago, a threat which hangs over our heads.The songs are chants of healing.

Written in 2007 and revised in 2020 the Panic Duo--Nic Gerpe and Pasha Tseitlin--magnificently premiered the piece in March at Ian Dicke's Outpost Series in Los Angeles. At the time I wrote it--and this has only been confirmed as the years have passed--I realized I was being forced to say goodbye--as being-in-the-world-- to much that I had hoped for.Around that time I also wrote this poem: The Dark One I woke I sang I saw us bow Before the dark one Wishing reality Would end The tariffs of principle The unbowed joy of love Were eviscerating us We were a new kind Of heathen sending trains Of dead innocents back To their waiting families We had surrendered Convinced that ‘free’ Was more than a word We made our t-shirts, Our cars, our bowls And brushes into weapons We fought to stay blind We twisted the earth Into a crowbar and jacked The universe off our backs We tried to celebrate With extravagant diseases A booming market and leisurely Affairs but the harpoons of disgust Made us weep We started hoarding And taught savagery To the young Never before had prosperity Been so widespread Yet in dry riverbeds People fought Over human flesh I woke I sang I saw us bow down Before the Dark One He heard me, opened doors For me, encouraged me to sing on Knowing full well that the ways Were lost And lost even were the words That had named them

A study of history reveals that a society can be in ruins before the ruins appear.