Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

> Thomas Pasatieri

Thomas Pasatieri: Letter to Warsaw (2003)
Commissioned by Music of Remembrance

World premiere: May 10, 2004, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA at Music of Remembrance’s Holocaust Remembrance Day concert. Guest soprano Jane Eaglen with MOR musicians, led by Gerard Schwarz.

Recording: Letter to Warsaw is recorded on Naxos American Classics (8.559219). MOR musicians, led by Gerard Schwarz, are joined by soprano Jane Eaglen.

Letter to Warsaw is the extraordinary musical setting of one woman’s intimate first-hand account of life in the grip of the Holocaust. American composer Thomas Pasatieri created this powerful song cycle in 2003, setting six texts by poet/cabaret artist Pola Braun. Braun wrote these texts while in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Majdanek concentration camp, where she perished in 1943. Letter to Warsaw opens a window to the emotional life of all women trapped in the web of Holocaust tragedy. Braun’s voice of witness ensures that she will not be swallowed up by the anonymity of history. Through Pastieri’s music, her words tell a story and remind us that each victim of the Holocaust was an individual.

Thomas Pasatieri shares the following remarks:

In January of 2003, MOR Artistic Director Mina Miller approached me about writing a song cycle based on six unpublished texts by the Polish cabaret artist Pola Braun. These texts were composed while Braun was incarcerated in the Warsaw ghetto and in the concentration camp Majdanek. Two of the texts were originally set to music that no longer exists. I was inspired by these poems, and their descriptions of a woman's loss of freedom and her home. That’s how it all began. I am so fortunate to have had such incredible texts to set.
–Thomas Pasatieri

Letter to Warsaw received its world premiere at our Holocaust Rembrance concert on May 10, 2004 at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. Letter to Warsaw was composed for soprano Jane Eaglen and conductor Gerard Schwarz. It is dedicated to Music of Remembrance’s founder and artistic director, Mina Miller.

Thomas Pasatieri (b. 1945, New York)

A prolific composer by the age of 15, Thomas Pasatieri studied with Nadia Boulanger before receiving a scholarship to The Juilliard School at the age of 16. His composition teachers there included Vittorio Giannini and Vincent Persichetti. At 19 he received the first doctorate awarded by Juilliard. He also studied with Darius Milhaud at Aspen where, at 19, his chamber opera, The Women, won the Aspen Festival prize. Other honors include the Richard Rodgers Scholarship, the Marion Freschl Prize, the Irving Berlin Fellowship, and an Emmy Award.

Pasatieri has taught at Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Cincinnati Conservatory. He directed the Atlanta Opera from 1980 to 1984 and, early in 1984, moved to California to work in films and television. He now resides in New York, and divides his time between composing and the presidency of his film production company, Topaz Productions.

Pasatieri has composed more than 400 songs, many with chamber ensemble accompaniment. His songs and operas have been performed by such artists as: Janet Baker, Frederica von Stade, Shirley Verrett, Catherine Malfitano, Evelyn Lear, James Morris, Thomas Stewart, and the late Jennie Tourel. Highly emotional characters in strong theatrical situations are characteristic of many of Pasatieri’s operas, including his most successful work, The Seagull, based on the Chekhov play, and The Trial of Mary Lincoln, written for television. His many film orchestrations include Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, and Angels in America.

Thomas Pasatieri is a member of Music of Remembrance’s Advisory Board.

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