Ayers commissioned to compose new festival work

October 2007. Jesse Ayers has completed a commission to compose a new festival anthem, Arise, My Soul, Arise!, for the inauguration of the new president of Malone College, Dr. Gary Streit.  The work is scored for the college's combined choirs [in the aisles], organ, piano, brass quintet, timpani [in front], and surround-sound winds [along the side walls and back], and includes audience participation. Ayers has also included narration pertaining to the college's 1892 founders, J.Walter and Emma Malone.  One of the narrators was the great-great grandaughter of the founders.