Memories of 9/11 and hopes for peace will be shared by audiences in the U.S. and Britain in a joint service on Sunday, September 11, 2011, at Wake Forest Baptist Church in Wait Chapel, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and simultaneously at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, United Kingdom. High resolution audio-visual equipment will connect the two sites.
The service features two world premiere performances of works by Kevin Malone, Ph. D., Head of Composition at the University of Manchester in the UK. E pluribus unum, performed by the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra, will transmit from the UK to Wait Chapel. It includes voices of 9/11 witnesses on loudspeakers in the orchestra. The second work, Angels and Fireflies, was inspired by the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, crash site. It will be performed in Wait Chapel by the Professional String Ensemble. Professor of Flute at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and renowned soloist Tadeu Coelho will join in the performance conducted by Wake Forest Baptist Church Director of Music Woodson Faulkner II.
Wake Forest Baptist Church Pastor for Preaching and Worship Rev. Angela Yarber will dance as soloist during Angels and Fireflies. Wake Forest School of Medicine Professor Emeritus Frank Wood will deliver his 9/11 poem “Eagle of Mourning”. Chief Executive of the Manchester City Council, and prominent leader in reconstruction after the 1996 terrorist bombing in Manchester, Sir Howard Bernstein will reply to a letter from Abraham Lincoln to the people of Manchester written on January 19, 1863.
The service begins in Wait Chapel with carillon ringing to mark the exact times in which planes first hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and finally, at 10:48am, the time of the last 9/11 plane crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, ten years ago. Immediately following the last ringing of the bells, at approximately 10:55am the concert portion begins with the Professional String Ensemble performance of American composer Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.
