On January 15, Emmy Award-winning Delaware composer Wilson Gault Somers and his organization, Mass for the Homeless, Inc/Music with a Mission, presented a check for $5,000 to Gold Star Families of Delaware, in support of the completion of the Gold Star Memorial at the Delaware River and Bay Authority’s Veterans Memorial Park at the base of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
This gift was the proceeds from a performance of Somers’s composition Requiem for 9/11 on the weekend of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, at St. Helena’s Roman Catholic Church in N. Wilmington, Delaware. First performed in 2012, Somers writes that Requiem for 9/11
Requiem offers a message of hope to humanity in the face of our many trials of adversity…. We, the people of this great nation, are called upon to leave a legacy of peace in this land, for our children and grandchildren; to find a way to bind up our wounds, internal and external…to make by God’s Grace, a better tomorrow that is filled with hope.”
Somers explains that “in our history as Americans… we have been repeatedly defined by our response to adversity,” and that our “challenge is to create… and I quote President Lincoln, ‘a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.’”Like Achord, Mass for the Homeless, Inc. promotes peace and bringing people together. Fittingly, Requiem for 9/11 draws upon text from the three faiths tied to Abraham, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Mass for the Homeless, Inc/Music with a Mission draws its name from another major choral/orchestral work by Somers, Mass for the Homeless, which premiered with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra in 1997. The organization exists to support Somers’s creative work and has raised thousands of dollars for Delaware homeless missions since 1990.