Marifé Torres was married to Terry Nichols during the time that he and Tim McVeigh were accused and subsequently convicted of bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Terry met Marifé through a mail-order bride service when she was seventeen and poor in the Philippines. He flew there to marry her (some reports say also to meet with Al Qaeda) but became upset when he learned she was already pregnant. He married Marifé anyway, and brought her to Kansas where her ideal of a fabulous American lifestyle was soon shattered by the desolate surroundings and a husband who rarely worked and spent most of his time with his army buddy, Tim. Marifé 's first child died of suffocation in what was ruled an accident, but she could never accept that there wasn't foul play involved. Coincidentally, Tim McVeigh was staying with the family at the time.

These true-to-life facts were the jumping off point for an engrossing and otherwise fictional novella by the brilliant Filipina writer Marianne Villanueva, who I met at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where I later composed much of Marifé Suite. Marianne and I had been working together to create an opera based on her novella when Jonathan McPhee asked me to compose a new work for Symphony New Hampshire. I immediately realized that the seeds were right in front of me, so I took parts of the already sketched music, expanded, edited, and added new sections, finally (!) creating an orchestral suite.

Marifé Suite has five movements, but the first two and last two are played without pause, so it feels like three large sections. Each movement is inspired by a scene from Marifé's life in the novella/opera: I. “Overture“ opens with clamoring bells and chimes, reminiscent of that special brand of Filipino Catholicism — devout, mystical, superstitious — that on special occasions erupts into an ecclesiastical carnival. It ends with a huge, garish, orchestral crescendo. This leads without pause into: II. “Prologue: What Men Talk About“: When asked by the jury if she overheard Tim and Terry's conversations, Marifé answers “How do I know...what men talk about? Fishing, maybe.“ She then reminisces about her life before America and the bombing and how seemingly simple it all was.

III. “Basílica del Santo Niño“ (the Basilica of the Holy Child): There is a famous cathedral on the island of Cebu where Marifé grew up that is home to a famous holy relic — a statue of baby Jesus — from the Spanish occupation, which is said to bless or heal anyone that touches it. Marifé appeals to the Santo Niño because she has just discovered her pregnancy and doesn't know what to do. We hear the people mumbling their prayers in the local dialect, chimes, then a hymn-like anthem played by three trumpets.

IV. “Trial by Fertilizer“ is where everything goes haywire! No one can believe that Marifé couldn't have known something was wrong with all those barrels of fertilizer around. The courtroom devolves into a chaos of dancing and large blue barrels with white lids. The chaos reaches a peak and then: V. “ Chairs“: Wandering among the symbolic chairs of the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, Marifé at last comes to accept her complicity in the plot because her insistent ignorance of its existence does not, ultimately, provide her with the absolution she seeks.