Recordings

The Parting - CD

Tom Cipullo

Coming April 2020...

Tom Cipullo, composer; David Mason, librettist

Catherine Cook, mezzo-soprano; Michael Mayes, baritone; Laura Strickling, soprano; Alastair Willis, conductor

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Hear Our Story Now - DVD

HEAR OUR STORY NOW

A Documentary Film Chronicling MOR’s Two Decades of Musical Witness

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and journalist John Sharify has created an hour-long documentary chronicling MOR’s journey, which had its premiere screening at the Frye Art Museum on October 14, 2018.

Hear Our Story Now DVD: $20 (+ $5 shipping/handling fee)

Out of Darkness - DVD

Jake Heggie

Out of Darkness is a powerful portrait of survival that conveys the Holocaust’s vast scope through emotionally rich depictions of those caught in its grasp. The first act, “Krystyna,” reveals the true story of Krystyna Zywulska, whose daring poems became anthems of defiance among her fellow prisoners in Auschwitz.

Act Two, “Gad,” explores the fate of homosexuals during the Holocaust through the experience of Gad Beck and Manfred Lewin, two idealistic young loves in 1930s Berlin whose lives and love were torn apart during Nazi rule.

Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer tell these stories with uncompromising emotional honesty, and with deep compassion that never descends to…

After Life - CD

Tom Cipullo, Lori Laitman

Tom Cipullo's contemporary opera After Life explores the role of art in a troubled world and poses weighty questions about the artist's duty in confronting inhumanity. David Mason's libretto imagines an encounter between the ghosts of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein, who reveal both their brilliance and their human flaws. Lori Laitman's song cycle In Sleep The World Is Yours sets three beautiful poems by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, who was to perish in a Nazi labor camp in Ukraine at the age of 18.

Out of Darkness - CD

Jake Heggie

In Out of Darkness, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer accomplish something remarkable. They convey the vastness of the Holocaust’s scope through emotionally rich portraits of those caught in its grasp, without reducing them to caricatures of martyrdom. The three chapters of this work relate stories that offer compelling musical witness to survival in the face of unimaginable adversity. Another Sunrise tells the amazing story of Krystyna Zywulska who, after being captured as a member of the…

Vedem - CD

Lori Laitman

An "important release," says American Record Guide. "Laitman’s music is smooth as a glove and suits the material to a T. It is warmly and simply romantic in idiom and lets the text do the talking." Every Friday for two years between 1942 and 1944, a group of teenage boy prisoners in the Terezín concentration camp shared their poems, stories and artwork in a secret magazine they called Vedem. Most of those boys perished in the Holocaust, but the pages of their magazine have miraculously been preserved. Inspired by this legacy, American vocal composer…

Camp Songs & Ghetto Songs - CD

Paul Schoenfield, Gerard Schwarz

American composer and pianist Paul Schoenfield is at the keyboard for two searing, heart-piercing works commissioned by Music of Remembrance. Schoenfield gives voice to the words of two brilliant poets - one a Holocaust survivor, one murdered - and the range of their emotions through rage, bitter humor, tenderness and fragile hope. This first English recording of his Camp Songs (a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist) joins the newest song cycle Ghetto Songs--transporting listeners from the horrors of the Sachenhausen concentration camp near Berlin to life in the Krakow Ghetto. Gerard Schwarz's Rudolf & Jeanette is a haunting, romantic chamber orchestra work evoking the life and love of the…

Unsilenced - DVD

This poignant, uplifting documentary about Seattle-based chamber music organization Music of Remembrance (MOR)--and its mission to ensure that the artistic voices of witness to the Holocaust are not lost--is the story of a priceless musical legacy, a woman with a vision, and the community that formed around a mission of remembrance.

Just a decade after its founding in 1998 by Artistic Director Mina Miller, Music of Remembrance has become internationally known, and stands out as a premier chamber music organization. Producer and director John Sharify captures the electricity of MOR's performances, and communicates the eloquent testimony that is at MOR's heart.

Through…

For a Look or a Touch - CD

Lori Laitman, Gerard Schwarz, Jake Heggie

Young American composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s “brilliant, moving work” (American Record Guide) is based on the true story of two gay teenage lovers the Holocaust tore apart forever. With an elegiac piece for cello and string quartet, In Memoriam, by Gerard Schwarz; and American composer Lori Laitman’s song cycle The Seed of Dream, based on poetry by Vilna Ghetto survivor Abraham Sutzkever.

Purchase ($20):

Brundibár - CD

Hans Krása

Opera News called MOR’s Brundibár recording on Naxos one of the top ten opera recordings of 2007. In coordination with MOR, Naxos has created a podcast interview with Ela Stein Weissberger, who survived the Terezín concentration camp. She played the role of the Cat in the original performances of Brundibár there. Her perspective on the creation and first performances of this historical opera is poignant, stirring, first-person history. To listen, download the Naxos podcast. (To learn more about or buy the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly mentioned in the…