UT's McConville Composes Work to Honor L'Aquila Victims

On April 6th of this year, an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 shook the mountainous town of L'Aquila and several other hill towns in the central Italian Abruzzo region.  The destruction was massive and heartbreaking: 260 were killed, over 1000 were injured, and 28,000 were left homeless.  A countless number of aftershocks, many of them registering over 3.5 on the Richter scale made rescue and recovery perilous.  Many of the survivors were forced to relocate to towns and cities along the Abruzzo coast.

University of Tennessee School of Music faculty member Brendan McConville felt an all too personal attachment to the tragedy.  His wife, Annachiara Mariani, also a UT faculty member (in the Italian program of the Modern Foreign Languages Department), is a native of Abruzzo and has family in a coastal town near Pescara.  The couple kept up on news of the tragedy through her family. As a concert dedicated to the victims of the earthquake was being organized by L'Associazione Musicale "Musica e Cultura" (of Roseto degli Abruzzo, Italy), McConville was contacted about composing a work that could be included.  He responded with a piano piece Che La Tua Fede Non Venga Scossa (Let Not Your Faith Tremble), which he performed for the concert on July 21st in Roseto degli Abruzzo.  The concert has subsequently been aired on SKY Italia.