MOR's Public Outreach Series Also Supports In-School Educational Program
SEATTLE, WA—August 25, 2008— In 2008-09, Music of Remembrance (MOR) presents the fourth season of its Sparks of Glory outreach series, with four free concerts-with-commentary. Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces program, MOR will explore a range of responses to the Holocaust by contemporary American composers such as Daniel Asia, David Stock, Simon Sargon, Lori Laitman, Steve Reich, and Paul Schoenfield. A highlight will be a reprise of Schoenfield's critically acclaimed Ghetto Songs, which had its world premiere at MOR in May 2008.
At these 90-minute Saturday afternoon performances, MOR Artistic Director Mina Miller (an international speaker on musicians' spiritual resistance during the Holocaust) will introduce the musical works and their composers, and offer social and historical contexts for the pieces. Praised by audience members for her "warmth, knowledge, and creativity," Miller has made MOR one of the most vibrant musical organizations in the Northwest.
"With these concerts, we've been able to draw diverse audiences," says Miller, "including many people for whom chamber music is a new experience. So many of them come away impressed by the quality of the performances, and deeply moved by the music's meaning."
MOR's extensive education and community outreach program, built around the Sparks of Glory series, reaches beyond the concert hall to people of all generations. Last year, MOR's school program included nine events serving five Seattle-area high schools and Everett Community College. The program integrated Holocaust curriculum with live performances of the Sparks of Glory programs, either in the school or by hosting students at the public performances. This season, MOR will add a new educational partner, traveling across the Cascades to Central Washington University.
The Saturday afternoon performances of Sparks of Glory begin at 2:00 p.m., and as usual feature some of the Northwest's top chamber musicians, along with the region's leading young vocalists, including Angela Niederloh and Morgan Smith. MOR will be performing at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and at Wallingford's Good Shepherd Center (GSC). SAM is located in downtown Seattle at 1300 First Avenue, at University Street. The Good Shepherd Center is in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood, at 4649 Sunnyside Avenue North.
For the events at SAM, the musical programs will emphasize connections between the Holocaust's musical legacy and the themes of the museum's exhibits. For the October 11, 2008, program, Miller will discuss SAM's recent Black Art exhibition, and how art and music can reflect identity issues, stereotyping and discrimination. (Many of that exhibition's art works are part of SAM's permanent collection, and can be viewed after the performance.) Jewish Czech composer Hans Krása's hauntingly beautiful chamber music, composed in the Nazi's "model" concentration camp Terezín, illustrates the power of spiritual resistance to dehumanizing racism. Simon Sargon's settings of Primo Levi's poetry and Osvaldo Golijov's gypsy tunes illustrate the diversity of contemporary music inspired by the lives and voices of those who experienced tyranny and persecution.
On January 31, 2009, A Vanished World reminds listeners that the Nazis aimed not only to murder countless people; they also were bent on destroying the vibrant and distinctive communal life that had long characterized Jewish Europe. The melodies of Joseph Achron recall folkloric elements of Russian Jewish life, and Egon Ledeč's atmospheric salon pieces are a final echo of a soon-to-be-lost Central European gentility. The program's title work, by David Stock, offers a nostalgic reminiscence of shtetl life, while Lori Laitman's song cycle The Seed of Dream conveys a poet's extraordinary ability to retain his humanity and emotional sensitivity even while trapped in the Vilna ghetto.
March 14, 2009, marks only the second performance of Paul Schoenfield's poignant Ghetto Songs, a 2008 MOR commission, featuring the poetry of the famed "Krakow troubadour" Mordecai Gebirtig, shot to death in the Krakow Ghetto at age 65. Also, Miller will discuss how America became a haven for many important artists fleeing the Holocaust, relating this theme to the SAM exhibition Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery. Works by émigré composers Ernest Bloch and Erich Korngold illustrate the influential role these newcomers had in shaping American musical life.
On April 18, 2009, the Sparks of Glory series closes with Different Trains, a program in which Seattle native Daniel Asia and New Yorker Steve Reich share the bill. Drawing on the poetry of New York's Paul Pines, Asia's song cycle is "imbued with images of family and Judaism, and their intertwining." Reich's landmark work juxtaposes sounds of the American trains that he, cocooned in privilege, rode as a child at a time when German trains transported helpless people to death camps.
Sparks of Glory Musical Witness Series
Hosted by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) & the Good Shepherd Center (GSC)
FREE TO THE PUBLIC*
Shemà
October 11, 2008, 2:00 pm (SAM)
Simon Sargon: Shemà
Hans Krása: Dance, Passacaglia and Fugue
Osvaldo Golijov: Lullaby and Doina
A Vanished World
January 31, 2009, 2:00 pm (GSC)
Joseph Achron: Stempenyu Suite
Egon Ledeč: Serenade, Kyticka
Lori Laitman: The Seed of Dream (MOR Commission)
David Stock: A Vanished World (MOR Commission)
Ghetto Songs
March 14, 2009, 2:00 pm (SAM)
Ernest Bloch: Nigun
Erich Korngold: Pierrot's Dance Song (Die Tote Stadt)
Paul Schoenfield: Ghetto Songs (MOR Commission)
Different Trains
April 18, 2009, 2:00 pm (GSC)
Daniel Asia: Breath in a Ram's Horn
Steve Reich: Different Trains
Vocalists: Megan Hart, Ross Hauck, Angela Niederloh, Erich Parce, Morgan Smith; Narrator: David Klein
Instrumentalists: Elisa Barston, violin; Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Zart Dombourian-Eby, flute; Mara Finkelstein, cello; Walter Gray, cello; Jonathan Green, doublebass; Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola; Leonid Keylin, violin; Mina Miller, piano; Valerie Muzzolini, harp; Marié Rossano, violin; Mark Salman, piano; Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Page Smith, cello
*This series is made possible, in part, by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterspieces program. Music of Remembrance is the recipient of a Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Program Grant with funding provided by the CMA Residency Endowment Fund.
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.
Media Contact:
Mina Miller, Artistic Director
Ph: (206) 365-7770
Email: info@musicofremembrance.org