He is perhaps best known for "The Skies are Weeping", a seven-movement cantata written in tribute to Rachel Corrie, an American member of the International Solidarity Movement killed in 2003 by a bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces while she tried to prevent a house demolition in the southern Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada.
He has performed thousands of hours of service in the community including coaching little league baseball and youth soccer and volunteering as an assistant Cub and Boy Scout leader.
He describes himself as a serious environmentalist ["I laugh only when I am in complete control"] and claims to have been called "Alaska's most notorious composer" due to his classically based protest musical works.
[1] In 2004 Philip Munger composed a cantata titled The Skies are Weeping, in seven movements for a soprano soloist, chamber choir, and percussion ensemble.
[4] The cantata memorializes Rachel Corrie, an American member of the International Solidarity Movement killed in 2003 by a bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces while she tried to prevent a house demolition in the southern Gaza Strip and Tom Hurndall, a British photography student and ISM activist, who was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an IDF sniper, Taysir Hayb, during the Second Intifada on 11 April 2003.
[5] A public meeting to address objections of members of the Jewish community and others who believed the cantata was one-sided and unfair to Israel failed to resolve disagreements.
[7][8] In January 2005, he has awarded "For Valor" decoration and named to the Department of Veterans Affairs Bugler Hall of Fame, by the service organization called Bugles Across America, for his 5-minute composition titled "Shards" which has been premiered on Jan 23 at the UAA music faculty benefit concert for the local student chapter of Music Educators' National Conference (MENC), 2005,[9] for "honoring America's Afghanistan and Iraq Wars' dead".
Munger was credited "for doing his bit to counter creationism" by confirming the beliefs of U.S. Republican nominee for vice president, Sarah Palin, that "dinosaurs and humans coexisted 6000 years ago.
Such notions, related to a common theme of "Young Earth creationism," claim that God created the world about 6,000 years ago, including the contention that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
In June 1997, he watched her speech at a graduation ceremony for small group of home-schooled students at an Assembly of God church, where Munger had been conducting the college band.