TORONTO – The father of a young girl who was killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook school is releasing an album in honour of his daughter called “Beautiful Life.”
Jimmy Greene, a saxophonist and former jazz instructor at the University of Manitoba, will release the album through Amazon and iTunes on Monday.
Greene and his wife Nelba Marquez-Greene had lived in Winnipeg for three years with their two children Isaiah and six-year-old Ana before moving to Connecticut where he teaches jazz studies at Western Connecticut State University. Greene taught in the jazz program at the University of Manitoba.
Six-year-old Ana was killed Dec. 14, 2012 after a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. The gunman killed 19 other children and six adults.
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Marquez-Greene announced the album’s release in a Facebook post saying she and her husband had struggled with the death of their daughter in different ways.
“I wanted to fight. I went to Washington. I shouted, I screamed, I wrote, I challenged. It was and is an external process for me. My husband, on the other hand, locked himself in my daughter’s room. On many days, his muffled heart-wrenching sobs were still audible on the other side of the door,” she wrote.
Marquez-Greene said that when her husband began writing the music for Ana she found it difficult to first listen to the music.
“When I finally allowed myself to listen to what he’d created, it was my turn for sobbing,” she wrote. “I rejoice in this beautiful expression of love and music for a little girl who led nothing but a Beautiful Life.”
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The album will include the song “Come Thou Almighty King” which she sang along with her brother playing piano just months before the mass shooting. “Beautiful Life” features several jazz artists and the choir from Winnipeg’s Linden Christian school.
Greene thanked the “community of musicians” who contributed to the album in a Facebook post from October.
“From the day Ana was killed, the amazing community of musicians to which I belong has been there for my family and me, front and centre. It is evident in the love and care they showed in the planning, production and engineering of this recording,” Greene wrote.
Partial proceeds from the album sales will help support The Ana Grace Project and The Artist Collective of Hartford.
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