Memento Mori: An AIDS Requiem

James Adler’s Memento Mori: An AIDS Requiem is an oratorio for soloists, men’s chorus, and orchestra. It is dedicated to those who have succumbed to AIDS. A 75-minute work in nine movements, Memento Mori combines traditional English, Hebrew, and Latin texts with original prose and poetry by Quentin Crisp, Philip Justin Smith, Denise Stokes, and Bill Weaver. Memento Mori was commissioned by the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus. Of its 1996 world premiere in Atlanta, Derrick Henry (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) wrote, “Employing an eclectic, predominately lyrical musical language, Adler writes for both chorus and orchestra with uncommon imagination.”