Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

> 2004-05 Guest Composers

Lori Laitman

Lori Laitman is an award-winning composer of art songs whose works are performed widely in the United States and abroad. She is a graduate of Yale (magna cum laude, honors in music) with a M.M. in flute performance. She works with many of today’s eminent poets, in addition to setting classic poets such as Emily Dickinson. She has composed music for film, theatre and chamber ensembles, but since 1991 has concentrated on composing for the voice. Albany Records released her debut CD, Mystery — The Songs of Lori Laitman in 2000, and Dreaming — Songs of Lori Laitman in 2003. In 2004, The Cleveland Opera presented the world premiere of her opera Come to Me in Dreams.

Ms. Laitman’s song cycle, Holocaust 1944, received its world premiere at Music of Remembrance’s November 2000 concert, featuring baritone Erich Parce and doublebassist, Gary Karr, for whom the work was composed. Fathers, for baritone and piano trio, was then given its world premiere on April 27, 2003 at MOR’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Concert. Erich Parce, again, was the baritone in this song cycle. Based on this previous successful collaboration, MOR offered her the organization’s fourth commission to compose a song cycle specifically for Erich.

Lori Laitman writes:
I have chosen to set several poems from Vilna ghetto survivor Abraham Sutzkever (1913 - ), translated by C.K. Williams. The title The Seed of Dream is taken from a line in the poem To My Child, and it refers to Sutzkever’s murdered son. Sutzkever consistently produced poems of great artistry under the most dire of circumstances. These first-person accounts, written between 1941 and 1944, not only bear witness to the destruction around him, but to his undying belief in the beauty of the word and the world.

The world premiere of Laitman’s The Seed of Dream took place on Monday, May 9, 2005 at Music of Remembrance’s Holocaust Remembrance concert (Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA). Melinda Bargreen of the Seattle Times wrote that the performance was "deeply moving", and that "Laitman illuminated the heart-wrenching poems with her music".

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