Memorializing Katrina, But With A Universal Touch

The first major work of classical music to commemorate the flooding of New Orleans gets its debut in Madison, Wisconsin this week. But composer Luna Pearl Woolf didn’t want her “Apres Moi, Les Deluge” for solo cello and a cappella choir to be simply a one-hit wonder that would be forgotten once the shock of Katrina abates. “Message pieces are awful and I won’t do them. This is an allegorical text. We tried to eliminate forms that are so specific that they would only apply to this one case. As you move from this one case and how we feel about it, the event becomes more universal and more worthy of being set to music and being listened to.”