Faculty Forum: Maurice Wright, professor of composition
“Opera from the Mine Wars: The Blair Mountain Tragedy”
Composer Maurice Wright discusses the process of creating his opera “The Blair Mountain Tragedy,” and previews selected excerpts from concert performances and demonstration recordings. The opera centers on the story of the Battle of Blair Mountain in Logan County, West Virginia, where in 1921, striking coal miners faced off against a “citizen’s army” of 3000 people allied with the mine owners in the largest armed uprising in the United States since the Civil War. The story gained national prominence when the mountain’s peak—where many died in a few days of fighting—was scheduled for a “mountain top removal” mining project that would have obliterated the battlefield and, some feared, the history of the people who fought there.
This event is open to the public and part of AIR.
Arts Interdisciplinary Research (AIR) is a holistic research center and forum for creative and scholarly research across the arts that includes cutting-edge colloquia, exploratory seminars, lecture demonstrations, launches of research publications and creative works, reading groups, faculty talks, and stand-alone conferences initiated by the faculty of the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts.