The events of 9/11 and its aftermath had a profound effect on us as individuals and on the world as a whole. This program invites the audience to reflect on the violence that occurred on September 11, 2001, as well as the 20 years of war that followed. It opens with a new piano trio by Arson Fahim, a young Afghan composer. Born in 2000, Mr. Fahim graduated from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in 2020 and is currently studying composition and piano at the Longy School of Music in Boston. His music is infused with his compassion and a fierce commitment to social justice within his homeland of Afghanistan. This piano trio was commissioned for this concert by Symphonia Caritas. A graduate of Indiana University and the Julliard School, William Harvey taught violin and viola at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music for 4 years. While there he founded the Afghan Youth Orchestra, which he took on tour to the US and Europe. Songs of Afghan Women is a song cycle in the Dari language, set to poetry by a famous Afghan female poet. Each is paired with a lundaye, a genre of folk poetry in Pashto. The program concludes with Ned Rorem’s response to 9/11, Aftermath. Mr. Rorem, a pacifist, opened the program notes to Aftermath with these words: “In the wake of the September 11th shock, I asked what a thousand other composers must have asked: what is the point of music now? But it soon grew clear that music was the only point. Indeed, the future will judge us, as it always judges the past, by our art more than by our armies.”