Seraphic Fire explores humanity’s continual quest for peace through the music of American composers Steve Reich and Samuel Barber. Setting the anonymous poems of Irish monks from the 8th to the 13th centuries to music composed in the 20th century, Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs are a meditation on solitude, isolation, and the simple joys of life. A special rebroadcast of the 2016 performance of Reich’s The Desert Music by Seraphic Fire and New World Symphony, conducted by Patrick Quigley, raises the duality of war and peace and questions the lengths humankind will go to achieve its goals.