After Ariel Sharon walked onto the Temple Mount with his political entourage in September of 2000, starting the worst violence in the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, soldiers killed Kent's close friend, Asel Asleh, a wonderful 17 year old with vision and intelligence, fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, who was wearing his Seeds of Peace t-shirt and walking the wrong way in a demonstration.
Kent stayed in Bethlehem for a time, receiving phone calls from every relative or friend who knew where he was, and from reporters all across the US, asking him what the situation was like in the West Bank. The more his family watched CNN, the more he started to feel pressure to come home. His Palestinian friends told him to go home as well -- they would have left if they could.
Kent retreated into the mountains, disillusioned and lost. He wrote into a coming of age memoir all that he had seen, and how his experience had crushed him and awakened him to the suffering of the world. And then he started to heal, picking banjo on the porch and working as a cook at Holden Village, a Lutheran Ecumenical Retreat Center in the Cascade mountains of Washington state.
After two years, Kent left Holden to go to the State University of NY at Stony Brook to study another of his true loves, classical composition.
Kent is busy writing many ensemble and solo performance works for 'classical' players. Among these, Providence was performed in 2004.
Mountain Vespers, the evening liturgy that Kent wrote during his time at Holden, is still played frequently at Holden Village, and across the country. Light into the World, Hope for a New Day is a new Sunday worship service available from Owl Mountain Music.
A recording with Gabe Shuford and Nicholas Walker, two incredible musicians, under the name Stolen Shack came out this Spring.
Kent has a solo album coming out in the fall of 2004 with Micah Schonberg and musicians from Stolen Shack, with the incredible addition of Jamey Haddad on percussion. Kent is also releasing a live CD with Micah Schonberg called "Live in Vermont." Visit www.kentgustavson.com for more information.