Music student moved to remember one-year anniversary of Tree of Life tragedy
Winfield B. Carson V conducts an orchestra in the playing of his composition commemorating the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Pictured is Winfield B. Carson V, who goes by the nickname “Anthony.”
A local man studying for his master’s degree in musical composition has commemorated the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in his “Choral Fantasia for the Death of Eleven.”
Winfield B. Carson V’s choral piece was performed in public for the first time by an octet as part of a program last Sunday at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is a student.
Shortly after learning of the horrific events at the Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, Carson came to a shocking realization: At a friend’s bar mitzvah several years ago, he had met two of the victims, Sylvan and Bernice Simon.
“It really shook me up,” said Carson, 24, who goes by the nickname Anthony. “It was one of the driving forces behind my composition.
“I was shocked. I didn’t think something like this would have happened in Pittsburgh. I considered Pittsburgh to be God-fearing city, and this violated the sanctity of a house of worship.”
Carson, the son of Kathy and Winfield B. “Scott” Carson IV of North Strabane Township, worked on his 13-minute choral piece for two and a half to three months, finishing it early this year.
A Hebrew hymn is repeated 11 times throughout the composition, which Carson directed as part of a program of remembrance. Some of those in the audience were moved to tears, he said in a phone interview last week.
“It’s mainly to commemorate the lives of the people and hope that this never happens again in Pittsburgh or really, anywhere,” said Carson, who would like to direct a performance of his work one day in the Pittsburgh area.
Carson spent his freshman year at Canon-McMillan High School and transferred to Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Midland, Beaver County, graduating in 2014. His undergraduate degree is from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
Today, Gov. Tom Wolf will share a reading during the “Remember. Repair. Together” commemoration to mark the anti-Semitic attack.
The somber ceremony, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, will begin at 5 p.m. at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, 4141 Fifth Ave., Oakland.
The governor signed a proclamation declaring October 27, 2019, “Remember Repair Together Day” in Pennsylvania to be a day of remembrance for the victims of the shootings, and ordered state flags to fly at half-staff.
He asked Pennsylvanians to spend the day “reaching out to build bridges of understanding as a way of honoring the victims.”