Steven Sametz, a professor of music and an internationally acclaimed composer, poses for a photograph, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. Sametz will be using a $25,000 award he just received to compose a new work that will respond to the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings. To help in the creative process, he is asking children to submit drawings that depict tragedy and loss. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
December 11, 2013 - 11:51 PM
BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Composer Steven Sametz (SAM'-ehts) has written dozens of pieces in his long and prolific career, perhaps none so personal as the one he's about to begin: a requiem for the victims of the massacre in Newtown, Conn.
The Lehigh (LEE'-heye) University music professor grew up about 20 miles from Newtown, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.
Sametz won a $25,000 music prize from the University of Connecticut to compose a piece for chorus and orchestra, based on the idea that music can aid the healing process.
His working title is "A Child's Requiem."
He says it's his way of "putting something into the world that might be positive or helpful in the face of something that was horrifying."
News from © The Associated Press, 2013