The Virginia Arts festival opens its 15th season with an exciting world premiere. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, the Festival co-commissioned a new music theater piece titled "Rappahannock County." Renowned composer Ricky Ian Gordon set words by lyricist Mark Campbell in the form of 20 stories of the lives of Virginians at war, vignettes that are by turns poignant, powerful, humorous and ultimately very human. WHRO-FM’s Dwight Davis spoke Ricky Ian Gordon about "Rappahannock County."