Press
“Making sense of the senseless” | KnoxTNToday | November 2, 2023 by Harold Duckett
Wentzel’s music is like an adult coloring book bringing Griffin’s word drawings to life in ways that are both separate and complementary to the poetry’s own internal music of rhythms and patterns. Neither the power of the sung story, nor the music, ever lagged.
The tunes reflected their love and remembrance of the victims while highlighting the terrible reality of shootings across America.
A collaboration between a composer and an author/poet can take many forms and involve varying degrees of artistic connection. However, when the subject matter of a very successful collaboration flows from a personally experienced tragedy, it is assumed that those connections have come from a place deep inside each person, and produced a work that is a unique entity different than the sum of its parts. Sanctuary Walls...is just such a creation.
Forrest Wentzel’s gloomy, multi-textured and at times virtuosic piano score...perfectly underlies the images Griffin has set down.