Three of the five movements of the Requiem memorialize specific catastrophes of the 20th century. The first movement mourns the life, times and brutal murder of Steven Biko, the South African leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. Movement II addresses the unspeakable losses of the Holocaust. Movement IV mourns the loss of our many friends to AIDS.

In the manner of liturgical requiems, this secular requiem also sounds notes of hope. The third movement, based on an observation in the I Ching that no storm can last all day, indicates that healing is possible, in spite of the recurrence of evil.

The final movement memorializes the heroic gesture of the cellist, Vedran Smailovic, who played for 22 days at the killing site of 22 civilians in Sarajevo; his name is silently embedded in the first letter of each line of the poem on which the movement is based.
The poems of the Requiem were written in memory of the sculptor and painter, Walter Winika.

The Requiem Before the Times of Peace, was performed by The New York Virtuosi Singers, directed by Harold Rosenbaum, at St. Peter's Church on April 24, 1999, in New York City.
Excerpts from The Requiem Before the Times of Peace, were performed by The New York Virtuosi Singers, directed by Harold Rosenbaum, at The Kaufman Center, Merkin Concert Hall, on Jan. 21, 2006, NYC.

Jeffrey Schanzer is a composer and guitarist involved in a wide variety of music, ranging from fully notated to fully improvised. He has studied composition with Morton Feldman and Anthony Davis and guitar with Oswald Rantucci.

No More In Thrall, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, where his father was a prisoner, was performed by the Sirius String Quartet with percussionist Kevin Norton, and released on the Composers Recording Inc. (CRI) label.

The Schanzer/Speach Duo, in which he performs with his wife, composer/pianist Bernadette Speach, has performed across the U.S., in Puerto Rico and Europe. The Duo's first CD, Dualities, was released in January 1992 on the Mode/Avant label (Mode/Avant 02) and was chosen as one of the top ten recordings of 1992 by Robert Hicks in Jazziz magazine.

The Jeffrey Schanzer Ensemble has performed at The Kitchen, St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn, The Alternative Museum, Roulette, The Knitting Factory, Trinity Church and Greenwich House. The Ensemble's first recording, Vistas, featuring Leroy Jenkins, Ned Rothenberg, Lindsey Horner, Bobby Previte and Bernadette Speach, was released in 1988.

Within the context of the Duo and his Ensemble, Jeffrey has worked with such musicians as Lester Bowie, Marty Ehrlich, Eli Fountain, Jason Hwang, Joseph Jarman, Oliver Lake, Myra Melford and Wadada Leo Smith. Jeffrey's compositions have been performed by the Buffalo Guitar Quartet, Essential Music, MOBI New Music Ensemble, Musicians Accord, Newspeak, New York Virtuoso Singers, mezzo-soprano Isabelle Ganz, baritone Thomas Buckner, soprano Cheryl Marshall, singer Theo Bleckmann, flutist Barbara Held, pianist Joseph Kubera, harpist Elizabeth Panzer and the flute/harp duo Giverny. He has collaborated with choreographers David Alan Harris, Jon Kinzel, Lynne Pidel, Emily Schottland and Nadine Tringali. Jeffrey also appears as a sideman on Leroy Jenkins' and Joseph Jarman's Out of the Mist on Ocean Records.

Jeffrey was a founding member of the Buffalo New Music Ensemble, former Music Program Co-Ordinator at the Alternative Museum, former President of the Musicians of Brooklyn Initiative (MOBI) a musicians' and artists cooperative founded by Lester Bowie, Oliver Lake and Cecil Taylor and formerly on the Board of Directors of Upper Hudson Musical Arts.

N. M. Hoffman's poems first appeared in the chapbook Iris Absolute in Portland, Oregon, in 1977. In that city, she contributed poetry to collaborations with musicians, artists, composers, and dancers, and was John Laursen's devil at Press-22. Poems have appeared in over 50 journals in the U.S., Canada, and U.K., including Weyfarers and Prospice in England; and the American journals, Central Park, Negative Capability, The Seattle Review, Calapooya Collage, Iowa Woman, Cal State Quarterly, Voices International, Fine Madness, Chelsea, The Clinton Street Quarterly, and Joe Singer's The Village Idiot, among others, and in the online journal EOAGH.

Her poetry has been published by Kearns Howard & Walker in art books with paintings by California artist, Gloria Matuszewski: The Chairs in 2024 and The Roses (a translation of 27 of the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, originally written in French) in 2022.

Nancy has translated and edited poetry for Cheyne Éditeur in France, and for Jadite Galleries in NYC. She has given readings and dramatic recitations in numerous places, including CBGB's and The Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC, The Frye Art Museum in Seattle, The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, and at Les Lectures sous L'Arbre, a summer poetry festival sponsored by Cheyne Éditeur. She received an Edward Albee Writer's Fellowship in 1988 and, in 1990, both the Celia Seigel and the Carnwath-Calendar Fellowships from New York University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Poetics in 1992. The esteemed Irish critic, Denis Donoghue, was her dissertation advisor.

Her work has been set to music by composers Eva Noda, Steven Lawrence, and John Vergin of Portland, Oregon, and Jeffrey Schanzer, Cheryl Marshall, Joseph Pehrson, James Vincent and Jacob Gelber in New York City. Jeffrey Schanzer's Requiem Before the Times of Peace, a setting of five poems, was performed in NYC under the directorship of Harold Rosenbaum by The New York Virtuosi Singers in 2000 at St. Peter's Church and also at Merkin Hall (in part) in 2005. Jacob Gelber's setting of Love in the Near Distance was performed June 22, 2016 at Lehigh University.

Nancy's prose has appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal and Theatre Review (California State University at Los Angeles).

The poet is married to Peter Graasbol Schmidt, formerly the Operations Director of The Art School at Old Church in Demarest, New Jersey. They live in Manhattan.

Gloria Matuszewski's painting "Prayer for Peace XIII" (2022) (20"x20") (oil, ink, pencil on canvas) provides the visual impact of the cover for this score.

She has lived in California most of her life. She earned a degree in Fine Art from the University of California in Berkeley, Secondary Life Teaching credential from SF State University and participated in Graduate Studies at JFK University.

Gloria has taught Art and Tai Chi for several years. Her artwork was included in the Art in Embassies Program and she has been exhibiting for 40 years. The work is in several collections including Kaiser Hospital, Marin General Hospital, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, William F. Black Collection, Stanford Medical Center Collection and the Tempe Public Library in Arizona. She lives in Novato, California.

She is represented by the Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, California, and the Lori Austin Gallery in Sebastopol and Healdsburg, California. She is also an active member and exhibiting artist at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. The artist lives in Novato, California.