Quaker Peace Waltz – Steve Heitzeg

Composer: Steve Heitzeg

Instrumentation: Solo Piano

Duration: Approx. 2 minutes

Date Written: 2008

Commissioned by: James Sewell Ballet and funded through a 2005 Archibald Bush Artist Fellowship

Additional Information: In 2008 composer Steve Heitzeg and choreographer James Sewell created their provocative and haunting ballet SOCIAL MOVEMENTS—a four-movement and 30 minute ballet addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time—peace and war, environmental justice, and human rights. Premiered by James Sewell Ballet on April 4, 2008 at The O’Shaughnessy on the campus of Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the ballet is scored for flute, clarinet in B-flat, trumpet in C, electric and acoustic guitar, piano and electronic keyboard, percussion, violin, viola, cello and bass. The movement titles are: 1.PROTEST 2.GREEN 3.DISPLACEMENT 4. EQUALITY.

QUAKER PEACE WALTZ—a simple and elegiac waltz for Norman Morrison and other peacemakers—appears at the close of the first movement PROTEST, an anti-war dance based on the sacrifice of Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker who set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon on November 2, 1965, in protest of the Vietnam War.