TWO SYMPHONIES features music from Stanley Grill’s MUSIC FOR THE EARTH and MUSIC FOR PEACE projects. SUMMER (a symphony) was composed while out walking on during a very hot August. From out of the hot blue sky came the sound of brass choirs, and from the green trees, choruses of strings and woodwinds. Cicadas were calling.

Work on SYMPHONY FOR PEACE started late in 2023 as wars raged in both Ukraine and the Middle East. Unlike other wars that have been fought since the last century, these are wars that pose a threat of escalating on a world-wide scale.

Not that music ever brought peace. But, as Lenny Bernstein famously said, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly, than ever before.”

Scattered throughout the score, in somewhat altered form, are melodies by various composers ranging from the Renaissance through the 20th century that were settings of the words “dona nobis pacem.”