I first met William at Christ House, a live-in clinic for homeless people with acute medical needs in Washington DC, in January of 2005. He had been there for less than a month. The day we met, he told me he was a musician, he once made his living playing bass with a touring R&B band called the Dynamic Superiors. He told me about life on the road, the drugs, the women, partying backstage with Marvin Gaye. He told me he hadn't picked up a bass in twenty-five years. I got to know him over the next few months and interviewed him in June, just as he was moving from the clinic into affiliated permanent housing across the street. These days the bass has again become his focal point - whenever I stop by, he's rattling the windows of his one-room apartment playing along to Metallica or Cream, or practicing for that week's performance of the Christ House gospel choir, or developing material for his next gig or recording session with one of several local musicians he's collaborating with. He also contributed the bass lines to this sound piece. Background: This piece is one product of a continuing collaboration with current and former patient-residents of the clinic. In spring of 2004, I received an American Composers Forum grant to do a composition project at the clinic. Throughout the next year, in addition to making music with some of the residents who played (and some who didn't), I would go home and work out musical ideas in response to our conversations. In the end, though, I kept coming back to the compelling immediacy of the stories I was hearing, and the conviction that they ought to be shared more widely, so I decided on a medium that would allow me to incorporate them directly. So, along with interview footage, I am incorporating original music as a sort of direct response to the stories. This piece, then, is first in a series conceived as a dialogue between some of the voices of Christ House and my voice as a musician and composer.

I first met William at Christ House, a live-in clinic for homeless people with acute medical needs in Washington DC, in January of 2005. He had been there for less than a month. The day we met, he told me he was a musician, he once made his living playing bass with a touring R&B band called the Dynamic Superiors. He told me about life on the road, the drugs, the women, partying backstage with Marvin Gaye. He told me he hadn't picked up a bass in twenty-five years. I got to know him over the next few months and interviewed him in June, just as he was moving from the clinic into affiliated permanent housing across the street. These days the bass has again become his focal point - whenever I stop by, he's rattling the windows of his one-room apartment playing along to Metallica or Cream, or practicing for that week's performance of the Christ House gospel choir, or developing material for his next gig or recording session with one of several local musicians he's collaborating with. He also contributed the bass lines to this sound piece. Background: This piece is one product of a continuing collaboration with current and former patient-residents of the clinic. In spring of 2004, I received an American Composers Forum grant to do a composition project at the clinic. Throughout the next year, in addition to making music with some of the residents who played (and some who didn't), I would go home and work out musical ideas in response to our conversations. In the end, though, I kept coming back to the compelling immediacy of the stories I was hearing, and the conviction that they ought to be shared more widely, so I decided on a medium that would allow me to incorporate them directly. So, along with interview footage, I am incorporating original music as a sort of direct response to the stories. This piece, then, is first in a series conceived as a dialogue between some of the voices of Christ House and my voice as a musician and composer.