A strange connection.

This evening I attended the Kronos Quartet concert over at Tunlane. There were no program notes, so for one of the pieces the first violin player gave a short explanation about how it was written and what the story behind it was. The piece was entitled "...hold me neighbor, in this storm..." and the violinist said that he asked composer, who is Serbian, to write a piece that explained the situation that was happening over there so that he,his group, and the audience could understand what was going on. He said this, and throughout the piece I kept thinking of Tim O'Brien and how he used his numerous books to try and figure out what happened over in Vietnam. O'Brien used words and Aleksandra Vrebalov used music to try and convey the emotional turmoil that they lived through.