[3] Thompson has said that in composing the piece, he "used the liturgical format in Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Christ in an effort to humanize these men and to reckon with my identity as a black man in this country in relation to this specific scourge of police brutality.
The work was premiered in November 2015 by the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club under the direction of Eugene Rogers.
It engages our audience, builds a strong sense of community amongst our singers, and can foster musical ubuntu.
Providing a safe place for students to express and process issues that affect us all can be very rewarding and act as another vehicle for bringing change to our world.
[11] It found renewed interest in 2020 [12][13][14][7] after the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests and outbreak of police violence.