Background of Shadow of the Swan

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It was then that I remembered the powerful poem "Babi Yar" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. For a reason then unknown to me, I began to pour over his poetry. Suddenly, I came across a brief poem entitled "Requiem for Challenger." I was stunned. The poem drew up from deep within my psyche the terrifying image of that tragic explosion which I witnessed on television that fateful morning in 1986. I was especially shaken by the irony of Yevtushenko's imagery that depicted the massive explosion as a great white swan. I couldn't help but draw a parallel between this terrible event and the Kursk disaster. The irony was overwhelming.

From the very onset of this project, I had been searching for a nexus - a common thread that could be woven into a musical fabric that would somehow link and fuse our two cultures together and would give meaning to this piece. I had discovered that connection. Sadly it had come full circle. A work whose conception had seen inspired by a Russian technological disaster as seen through the eyes of an American composer had become entwined with the memory of an American technological disaster as seen through the eyes of a Russian poet. Both events shook the world.

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