Love and Light ........................................................... Brian Balmages (b. 1975)

About Love and Light: “After losing a child at birth on November
8, 2018, 1st Lt. Elizabeth Elliott, associate conductor with the U.S. Army Band, turned to music to grieve and begin the healing process. In January 2019, she contacted composer Brian Balmages to write a piece of music to help her family, and others,
find strength. Lt. Elliott describes her experience with the work: ‘I know that this piece will help so many families now and into the future. Love and Light is for my daughter Madison, but it is also for all the babies in heaven that we lost…. Nothing can take away the pain of losing a child, but... time reveals, there is Love
and Light on the other side.’ Love and Light for Madison Elliott,
all little angels and their parents” seeks to answer three impossible questions through music:
1. What does unconditional love sound like?
2. What does it sound like when that love is shattered?
3. What does it sound like when a child first sees the face of God?
The composer writes that “the entire piece is based on a three-note
motif, presented at the very beginning of the work. While the three notes are used and developed throughout the piece, it is not until the
last section that it becomes apparent that these notes are the first three notes of Salvation is Created, a popular and powerful choral
work by Pavel Tchesnokov. This, combined with elements of the earlier lullaby and fragments of the hymn All Creatures of Our God
and King, forms the basis of the final section of the piece. It is
incredibly powerful, both in its fullness and its quiet vulnerability.” Love and Light was premiered by the United States Army Band,
“Pershing's Own,” with Lt. Elizabeth Elliott conducting on March 28, 2020. It is an eloquent, powerful expression of a mother’s love, even in unimaginable sorrow.
Recorded live, in concert, on February 17, 2024

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Fantastic ❤🎉