• Oct 7, 2021

Music of Remembrance opens its 24th Season with a free Welcome Back concert

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7, 2021
Contact: Mina Miller, Artistic Director; Steve Griggs, Administrator
(206) 365-7770
info@musicofremembrance.org
www.musicofremembrance.org

Music of Remembrance opens its 24th Season with a free Welcome Back concert

SEATTLE, WA—On Sunday, November 7, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. Music of Remembrance opens its 24th season with its return to the live concert stage at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. The season’s theme – the Power of Perseverance – is a tribute to the endurance so many people have summoned on our continuing journey together through the pandemic. More important, it’s a tribute to the courageous spirit that inspired the music we’ll share by people who continued to create even in the face of cruelty we can hardly imagine. “Our season’s theme represents a journey of questions to answer and others waiting to be asked,” remarks Artistic Director Mina Miller.

This Special Welcome Back Concert on November 7, free to the public, is MOR’s way of honoring the community for its perseverance through this difficult time. A selection of cabaret songs from Terezín is testament to the courage of prisoners who wrote and sang them under the noses of their Nazi captors. Polina Nazaykinskaya’s Haim is a tribute to David Arben, who survived seven labor and concentration camps thanks to his violin and went on to an illustrious career in America. There are works by Bohuslav Martinů, who was forced into exile but continued his deep involvement in the anti-Nazi resistance, and by Mieczysław Weinberg, who bears the unfortunate distinction of persecution at both Nazi and Soviet hands. New songs by American composers Lori Laitman and Tom Cipullo were inspired by the resilience of the ginkgo trees that survived nuclear devastation to sprout anew. We’ll also introduce the newest recipient of MOR’s David Tonkonogui Memorial Award,13-year old violinist Tokuji Miyasaka, in a performance of Joseph Achron’s soulful Hebrew Melody.

The concert showcases some of MOR’s stellar instrumentalists – many from the Seattle Symphony - violinists Mikhail Shmidt and Natasha Bazhanov, violist Susan Gulkis Assadi, and cellist Walter Gray, vocalists soprano Karen Early Evans and baritone Erich Parce, and pianists Jessica Choe and Mina Miller.

About Music of Remembrance

MOR remembers the Holocaust through music and honors the resilience of all people excluded or persecuted for their faith, nationality, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. In addition to rediscovering and performing music from the Holocaust, MOR has commissioned and premiered more than 30 new works by some of today’s leading composers, drawing on the Holocaust’s lessons to address urgent questions for our own time. MOR’s ensemble is drawn from the ranks of the Seattle Symphony.

MOR is planning this live concert in a cautious manner with safety protocols that include reduced seating capacity (maximum of 200), audience distancing, and masking and vaccination requirements. Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our audience, performers and staff.

Tickets can be reserved through the Benaroya Hall Box Office and will be assigned on a first come basis.

Tickets and more information: www.musicofremembrance.org