America the Beautiful: A Contemplation

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It is impossible to contemplate America the Beautiful without a mixture of pain, sorrow, despair, rage, and hope. When Min Kwon first contacted me about this project, the United States was being ruthlessly torn apart and the future of our nation seemed utterly bleak, on top of which the pandemic raged. My contemplation of the song is distilled from a much longer improvisation that was mostly marked by fury with occasional moments of melancholy and longing for an ideal that never really existed. This brief piece is a contemplation and a petition, a prayer and a scream. – Bruce Adolphe