Born in Buffalo, NY, Moravec is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hunter College, and currently teaches at Adelphi University. In 2004, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Tempest Fantasy.

Moravec’s oratorio, Sanctuary Road, was first performed by the Oratorio Society of New York on May 7, 2018, at Carnegie Hall. A collaboration with librettist Mark Campbell, the work is based on the writings of William Still, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes for slaves to escape to free states in the 1800s. Moravec says, “Time is the medium of music and memory is the mediator. In its sublime, mysterious way, music remembers. Composing music for this oratorio, I was guided by my intention to memorialize indelibly the spirit and events of this extraordinary chapter in American history. As William Still sings about the slaves he aided on their road to freedom, ‘Their testimony will never be forgotten.’” The work consists of fifteen movements; the first is a kind of introduction of the characters. There follows a series of stories, including that of Henry “Box” Brown, who travels inside a shipping crate. Another is about Ellen Craft, who disguises herself as a sick old man aboard a train to Philadelphia and discovers that her fellow passenger is the brother of her former master. Clarissa Davis prays for rain, so that she may escape by boat. Still himself appears throughout, especially in the finale for the five soloists and chorus, who intone, “Shout from every rooftop, loud as can be: Free.”

~ Program Notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2020.