The River was comissioned by and is deadicated to Con Vivialty

I think one would be mistaken to think that "Down in the River to Pray" is a simple and happy tune. It definitely has that energy, but all great things in this world have duality--a nuance that allows them to convey the depth of the human experience. While "Down in the River to Pray" is relatively joyous, it strikes me as one that is also crying out at the pain of the human experience. Many American Citizens in the post civil war era found their lives characterized by the extreme difficulty of living in the industrializing United States, taking the chance on moving West, and the stress passed to them by their ancestors who came to the new world by force or as a gamble for a better life for themselves and their families. In this piece I wanted to capture all of the emotions of that time, because it is representative of the world I find myself living in. The gains made by the working class since that time have been eroded and much of the world is passing into an oligarchy even as the world is more interconnected than ever before. This work is the scream of that pain, but its duality is the reminder that darkness cannot exist without light.