American Guernica began as a technical challenge to Adolphus Hailstork to combine gospel-flavored material with contemporary compositional techniques. That led to the idea of an interrupted church service, which called to mind the bombing (in which 4 girls were killed and another child was blinded) in Birmingham, Alabama, September 15, 1963. What would that moment (and music reflecting that moment) contain? Sunday School music, explosion sounds, chaos, anguish, screaming. Eventually, there would...