"Casop: A Requiem for Rice" is a new contemporary classical symphonic work that tells the stories of Africans enslaved on Lowcountry South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations. Edda L. Fields-Black, associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, is the project's executive producer and librettist. Composed for full symphony orchestra and choir, the new work is an African and African-American inspired take on a classic requiem — in the spirit of Verdi, Mozart, Faure and Britten.