Protest Song was originally commissioned by New York's Sequitur ensemble, as part of their series of "cabaret concerts" centered on a specific theme ("protest" in this case). I decided to collaborate with my dear friend, the poet Peter Gizzi, and during summer of 2001 we met to discuss an array of possible topics.

Then came September 11th.

A few months later Peter sent me a beautifully elegiac text, which I immediately began to set. For some reason or another, his description of the poem's emotional terrain, which he described as emanating from "the hollowness of grief," reminded me of the sound of natural harmonics on string instruments. The instruments in Protest Song all play a very simple and naked music - the voice and the text are the focal point.