HIM SOPHY (composer; Cambodia) was born into a musical family in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia in 1963. He started learning the piano in 1972 in Phnom Penh, but was forced out of the city in 1975 for the duration of the Khmer Rouge regime. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, he returned to his musical studies at Cambodia’s Secondary School of Fine Arts. In 1985, he won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he studied and earned his PhD. He returned to Cambodia in 1998, and opened the Him Sophy School of Music in 2013. His previous works, including the acclaimed rock opera Where Elephants Weep, have demonstrated an unparalleled facility for bringing Western and Khmer musical worlds into intimate conversation. This time, Sophy combines a Western chamber orchestra and chorus with Khmer instrumentalists and vocalists. These traditional musical forms are crucial for honoring the dead; unfortunately, live performances are seldom heard in the capital and rapidly disappearing in the countryside.