Symphony celebrates 20th with original score

The Carson City Symphony's 20th season will kick off with an original work by New York composer Bruce Craig Roter.

Roter was commissioned by the symphony to write the piece he calls "With Courage and Compassion (A Salute to First Responders)," according to symphony spokeswoman Eleanor Bugli.

Roter will be in Carson this week in preparation for the first public performance of the piece on Saturday.

"We told him to write whatever he wanted," Bugli said. "It didn't have to be a history of the orchestra. So he wrote a piece to honor the first responders to Sept. 11."

Bugli described the work as heroic.

"It has a quiet section in the middle, but it is very majestic," she said.

Roter is an assistant professor of music at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y.

On Tuesday, Roter will present the score to a Reno firefighter, whose brother died in the attacks, and on Thursday he will be working with Carson Middle School students.

On his Web site, Roter describes the work as a personal response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"'With Courage and Compassion' is a life-affirming work," he said. "It celebrates the lives of those heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice on that day. But it also celebrates all first responders in all communities who place their lives on the line each and every day. It is to First Responders everywhere that this work is dedicated."