Spring Concert: May 12, 2008
World Premiere! Ghetto Songs, with composer Paul Schoenfield on piano, baritone Morgan Smith, mezzo soprano Angela Niederloh, and ACT's Kurt Beattie as narrator.

Paul Schoenfield's first commission for MOR, Camp Songs, won raves -- "The work is one of Schoenfield's most brilliant and telling pieces of music." Seattle P-I (2002) -- and acclaim as a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. His newest commission, Ghetto Songs, is based on the poetry of the beloved Polish 'troubadour' Mordecai Gebirtig, murdered in the Krakow ghetto.

Special guests the Northwest Boychoir, led by Joseph Crnko, sing Yiddish choral music arranged by Victor Ullmann and performed in the Nazi "model" concentration camp Terezín.

Also: "salon music" from Terezín violinist Egon Ledec; an exuberant Erwin Schulhoff concertino; and the premiere of American composer David Stock's arrangement of a song by popular Israeli singer, Chava Alberstein.

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Poignant World Premiere from Jake Heggie
Sings Out on New MOR CD

MOR's latest CD, For a Look or a Touch, presents the world premiere of the MOR commission from hot young American opera composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer - "a sharply poignant, deeply affecting work" (Seattle Times). Based on the true story of two gay teenagers the Holocaust tore apart forever, the dramatic song cycle summons up both Berlin's wild cabaret night-life and brutal Nazi horrors, while making a desperate, poignant plea for remembrance.

Released on Naxos, the world's leading classical music label, on April 29, MOR's recording also includes In Memoriam, by the Seattle Symphony's Gerard Schwarz - a beautifully meditative, elegiac piece for cello and string quartet, in honor of cellist David Tonkonogui (1958-2003).

And from acclaimed American art song composer Lori Laitman comes The Seed of Dream. The song cycle illuminates the grief, misery, and unbending resistance in each classical line of poetry by Abraham Sutzkever, written during his time in, and after his escape from, the Vilna Ghetto.

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MOR Brundibár CD Makes Opera News Top 10!
Naxos Unveils Ela Stein Weissberger Interview

Funded by the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences

MOR’s Brundibár recording on Naxos had critics singing its praises, and now the January issue of Opera News has called it one of the top ten opera recordings of 2007.

In coordination with MOR, Naxos has created a podcast interview with Ela Stein Weissberger, who survived the Terezín concentration camp. She played the role of the Cat in the original performances of Brundibár there. Her perspective on the creation and first performances of this historical opera is poignant, stirring, first-person history. To listen, click here. (To learn more about or buy the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly mentioned in the interview, click here.

If you order our Brundibár CD online at Amazon, a percentage of your purchase will go to support MOR. You can also support MOR by buying it from us and including a contribution to our non-profit organization. For more about the CD, click here.

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