Music of Remembrance - Remembering Holocaust Musicians

EUROPEAN SIGHTS TO BLEND WITH LOCAL SOUNDS ON MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE TRAVEL TOUR HIGHLIGHTING JEWISH CULTURE'S LIVING MUSICAL LEGACY

Tour Participants to Attend Holocaust Conference, Hear European Premiere of MOR Commission

SEATTLE, WA—January 9, 2007—Seattle-based Music of Remembrance (MOR), acclaimed for its performances of music by artists whose work was stifled by censorship or ended by the Holocaust, presents a uniquely musical European trip this May. Art from Ashes: An Exclusive Guided Tour of Jewish Culture's Musical Legacy is a 17-day tour (May 15 - June 1, 2007), with stops in Berlin, Prague, Krakow, Warsaw, Vilnius, and Copenhagen. Reservations are being accepted now.

"Nothing introduces you to a place like its music," says MOR's Artistic Director Mina Miller, an international authority on the music of the Holocaust. "For our visits to the centers of Jewish cultural life in central and eastern Europe, we have arranged educational presentations and walking tours—but we top everything off with performances of beautiful, breathtaking music."

The educational centerpiece of the tour comes in Krakow, when participants will attend the major international conference, "The Legacy of the Holocaust: The World Before, The World After." The bi-annual conference—co-sponsored by Jagiellonian University, the University of Northern Iowa, Texas A&M University, and the University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh-also includes a day-long visit to Auschwitz/Birkenau, with a guided tour of the site, its museum, and its preserved structures.

The conference's keynote speaker is Helen Epstein, a noted speaker on memoir and biography, and the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Prague. Miller will also be a key speaker at the conference, and at other tour venues, including the Berlin Jewish Museum and Terezín Memorial Museum. A prolific speaker on the Holocaust and its effect on artists and their music, Miller's presence adds a wealth of insight and information to the tour. As one listener wrote after hearing her speak, "I continue to be amazed how articulate she is, and how knowledgeable."

Krakow will also be the site of the European premiere of the 2003 MOR commission Letter to Warsaw, performed by young Krakow musicians. Letter to Warsaw sets to music Pola Braun's intimate, firsthand account of life in the grip of the Holocaust. Composer Thomas Pasatieri's song cycle contains six texts by the poet/cabaret artist Braun, who wrote them while imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Majdanek concentration camp, where she perished in 1943. The work had its world premiere in Seattle in May 2004, with soprano Jane Eaglen as the vocalist and Gerard Schwarz conducting.

Other specially-organized concerts—given in the places these works were created and originally performed—include Weimar-style cabaret in Berlin, chamber music in Prague, traditional klezmer music performed in the Jewish quarter of Krakow (Kazimierz), and in Vilnius, an evening of poignant Yiddish songs preserved from the Vilna Ghetto.

Tour Itinerary Revisits Past, Discovers Today's Revitalized Jewish Culture

The tour explores the extent of the Holocaust's tragedy by first uncovering the histories of the thriving cultures uprooted, and then follows up with the condition of music and the other arts in Nazi-controlled Europe, highlighting music's role as a form of spiritual resistance to oppression. But a key reason to take the tour now, emphasizes Miller, is to experience the rebirth of Jewish life and arts in today's Central and Eastern Europe.

The tour begins in Berlin, the originating point of the Holocaust. In the pre-Nazi years, Berlin was a major European center of musical energy, and its proud Jewish community was at the center of the city's commercial, intellectual, and artistic life. Berlin's Jewish Museum chronicles the history of Jewish people in Berlin by juxtaposing grand events with the intimate details and artifacts of everyday existence in Jewish families, while the recently opened Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe provides a haunting reminder of the massive loss of life.

Prague's Jewish community dates back at least to the 10th Century. Its 14th-century synagogue is the oldest preserved place of Jewish worship in Central Europe. The tour will explore the Jewish Quarter in depth, with visits to its historic synagogues, the Old Cemetery, the Jewish Town Hall, and the Jewish Museum. Thirty-five miles to the north of Prague, participants will visit the fortresses, the museum, the hidden synagogue, the barracks, and the town of Terezín: the "model" concentration camp used in Nazi propaganda to deceive the world about the treatment of Jews in camps.

For nearly 1,000 years, Poland was a Jewish homeland, and the tour visits Krakow (as mentioned earlier) and Warsaw. Pre-war Warsaw held Europe's largest Jewish population-nearly 400,000, or a third of the city's total. The Warsaw Ghetto, established in 1940, eventually confined nearly half a million people in about 3% of the city's area. By the end of the war, Warsaw's Jewish population was destroyed.

Lithuania's Jewish population dates to the 13th century. By the 18th century, Vilnius (or "Vilna") had become a world center of Talmudic learning, and was often referred to as the "Jerusalem of the North," but this Jewish life was virtually destroyed during WWII. Today, Vilnius is a lively city that values the cultural importance of its Jewish heritage. The tour provides a guided walk through the streets of the Small Ghetto and Large Ghetto, and a visit to the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum's Tolerance Center.

Denmark's history, and its contrast to the experience of other European countries the tour visits, makes Copenhagen an appropriate conclusion to the trip. Says Miller: "Denmark's people, more than those anywhere else in Europe, helped protect their Jewish citizens throughout the period of Nazi occupation." Stops include The Museum of Danish Resistance, with its stories of Danish life and the treatment of Danish Jews under Nazi occupation, and the new Danish Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, at the Royal Library.

The tour includes hotel accommodations, private minibus/coach and train travel, professionally guided walking and driving tours, entrance fees to all sites on the itinerary, the Holocaust conference registration fee, and all conference materials and activities, and breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. The package price for 17-day tour (not including international airfare) is $5,695 per person.

Reservations can be made by calling 206-365-7770, or by emailing Music of Remembrance: info@musicofremembrance.org. Registration for the trip closes on January 31, 2007.

About Music of Remembrance:
Music of Remembrance (MOR) fills a unique spiritual and cultural role in Seattle and throughout the United States by remembering Holocaust musicians and their art through musical performances, educational activities, musical recordings and commissions of new works. Since its 1998-99 inaugural year, MOR has presented two major concerts annually at Seattle's Benaroya Hall, marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) each fall and Holocaust Remembrance Day each spring.

Mina Miller is the founder and artistic director of Music of Remembrance, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization dedicated to remembering Holocaust musicians and their art through musical performances, educational activities, musical recordings, and commissions of new works. Dr. Miller is one of the world's leading authorities on music from this period. She has held major professorships, including her current appointment as Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington. As a concert pianist, she has appeared throughout the United States and Europe. As the host of this tour, she brings a deep understanding of Jewish culture's musical legacy, and a rare gift for sharing her insight with others.

MOR / PO Box 27500 / Seattle WA 98165-2500
Phone: 206-365-7770
Email: info@musicofremembrance.org

About MlR
MIR Corporation is a specialty tour operator with over 20 years of destination expertise. MIR, whose name means "peace" and "world" in Russian, is based in Seattle, with on-site offices throughout the former Soviet Union (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk, Ulan Ude, Kiev, and Tashkent). MIR specializes in all types of travel to Central/East Europe, Russia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, and Iran. MIR has arranged travel for many special interest groups including nonprofit institutions, alumni organizations, and museums.

MIR Corporation / 85 South Washington St, Ste 210 / Seattle, WA 98104
Phone: 800-424-7289 or 206-624-7289
Email: info@mircorp.com

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