ERIC GOULD serves on the faculty of the Berklee School of Music and formerly taught at Oberlin Conservatory. He describes his 1791: Requiem for the Ancestors as “a piece about empathy (and lack thereof).” Apollo’s Fire commissioned this work in 2024, and will premiere two movements of it in these concerts. The lyrics include poetry by Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved 18th-c. African poet who was 19 at the time of writing these verses. “By telling stories that too few are willing to tell, we free ourselves from the burden of silence,” says Gould.
