Pioneering American composer Annea Lockwood is about to present in Baltimore 'In Our Name', a new composition featuring poetry written by Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The concert, to be held at An Die Musik on November 17, will involve Thomas Buckner, baritone, Annea Lockwood, electronics and voice, and Ted Mook, cello.

Lockwood’s 'In Our Name', a collaboration with Buckner, builds on excerpts of poetry written by Jumah al Dossari, Osama Abu Kabir and Emad Abdullah Hassan while incarcerated without trial at Guantanamo Bay.

Armed with nothing other than the power of language, several Guantanamo inmates have relayed their experiences via poems, sometimes written using toothpaste or by scratching with a pebble onto styrofoam cups.

Deemed a ‘special risk’ by the US military - feared to convey secret coded messages - many of the poems have been confiscated and remain locked away.

Nonetheless, Marc Falkoff, an attorney for 17 Guantanamo prisoners, published a number of the poems in a 2007 anthology, 'Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak', University of Iowa Press.

Lockwood’s composition, featuring electronics, baritone and cello, draws upon three poems, Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari, 'Is it true?' by Osama Abu Kabir, and 'Brothers, bear the weight', an excerpt from 'The Truth', written by Emad Abdullah Hassan.

Dossari, a 33-year old Bahraini national and father of a young child, was held at Guantanamo without charge or trial for more than five years and subjected to a range of physical and psychological abuses.

Held in solitary confinement, Dossari, according to the US military, attempted to kill himself 12 times. In 2007 he was released to Saudi Arabia where he has remarried, gained employment and is doing well.

Kabir is a Jordanian water truck driver who had travelled to Afghanistan after joining the Islamic missionary organization Jama'at al-Tablighi. In Afghanistan, Kabir was detained by anti-Taliban forces and handed over to the US military.

Among the justifications for his continued detention, was the fact Kabir was captured wearing a Casio digital watch, a brand supposedly favored by members of al Qaeda, as some models can be used as bomb detonators. Kabir was released in 2007 and returned home to Jordan.

Hassan, a prolific poet from from Aden,Yemen, was seized and taken into custody in Pakistan as university student. He remains detained in Guantanamo as an 'enemy combatant', though the U.S. Military does not allege that he has participated in any violence.

Annea Lockwood, born in New Zealand in 1939 but living in New York since 1973, has been one of the world's leading pioneers in the field of composition and sound art over the last 50 years. Known for her explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sound environments, the artist's work encompasses sound art, installations, text-sound, performances and concert music.

Lockwood's music has been performed in large numbers of venues and festivals including: the Possibility of Action, an exhibition at MACBA, Barcelona, De ljsbreker; the Other Minds Festival, San Francisco; the American Century: 1950-2000, Whitney Museum; the 7th Totally Huge New Music Festival, Perth; and the Ear To The Earth Festival, New York. Lockwood's sound installation, A Sound Map of the Danube, is currently running at Schloss Orth, the headquarters of the Daonau Auen National Park, Austria.

For more information about the up-coming Baltimore concert, to request images or to arrange interviews with the composer or performers, contact Raymond Beegle at booking-AT-thomasbuckner.com