The 25th anniversary of the september 11 terrorist attacks

Northshore Concert Band’s 71st Season opens on November 8, 2026, with Memory & Motion.

The music in this program confronts loss and summons hope. Eric Ewazen’s A Hymn for the Lost and the Living is a highlight of our season-opening program.

After witnessing the tragic aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on New York firsthand, composer Eric Ewazen composed A Hymn for the Lost and the Living as a memorial to those who lost their lives, and as a tribute to the resilience and determination of those left behind and to the strangers united in grief.

This work will be performed 25 years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Eric Ewazen, photo credit: Bemidji State university

Eric Ewazen notes about A Hymn for the Lost and the Living:

On September 11, 2001, I was teaching my music theory class at the Juilliard School, when we were notified of the catastrophe that was occurring several miles south of us in Manhattan. Gathering around a radio in the school's library, we heard the events unfold in shock and disbelief. Afterwards, walking up Broadway on the sun-filled day, the street was full of silent people, all quickly heading to their homes. During the next several days, our great city became a landscape of empty streets and impromptu, heartbreaking memorials mourning our lost citizens, friends, and family. But then on Friday, a few days later, the city seemed to have been transformed. On this evening, walking up Broadway, I saw multitudes of people holding candles, singing songs, and gathering in front of those memorials, paying tribute to the lost, becoming a community of citizens of this city, of this country and of this world, leaning on each other for strength and support.
A Hymn for the Lost and the Living portrays those painful days following September 11, days of supreme sadness. It is intended to be a memorial for those lost souls, gone from this life, but who are forever treasured in our memories.

A Hymn for the Lost and the Living was commissioned by the Heritage of America Band at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, and recorded by them in 2001.

Eric Ewazen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the recipient of numerous composition awards and prizes, including the BMI Award (1973), Louis Lane Prize (1974), Bernard Rodgers Award (1975), Howard Hanson Prize (1976), George Gershwin Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1977), Peter David Faith Prize (1978), Rodgers and Hammerstein Scholarship (1979), and the Marion Freschl Award (1980). He received a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Festival and studied with Gunther Schuller. Ewazen has been teaching at the Juilliard School for more than 40 years and is widely considered one of the finest living American composers.