Music Of Remembrance Opens Its Virtual Concert Series With Paul Schoenfield's GHETTO SONGS

Music of Remembrance continues its 24th season with a virtual concert showcasing Ghetto Songs by American composer Paul Schoenfield. The concert will be available online for four weeks beginning Wednesday, December 1, 2021. Information is available at www.musicofremembrance.org.

MOR's season's theme, "The Power of Perseverance," is a tribute to the endurance so many people have had to summon on our continuing journey together through the pandemic, remarks Artistic Director Mina Miller. "More important, though, 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."

Ghetto Songs (streaming December 1 - December 31) features director Erich Parce's new dramatic realization of Paul Schoenfield's setting of verses that the great Yiddish poet Mordecai Gebirtig wrote in the months before and during his forced confinement in the Krakow ghetto. Of the 2008 world premiere of this MOR commission, The Seattle Times wrote: ". . . a dramatic exclamation point to a compelling evening." The program also includes musical gems by Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Géza Frid. Weinberg fashioned a distinguished career despite the unfortunate distinction of persecution at both Nazi and Soviet hands; Frid, facing mortal danger as a stateless Jew in occupied Amsterdam, organized clandestine concerts and helped the Dutch resistance as a document forger.

The concert showcases some of MOR's stellar instrumentalists, many drawn from the Seattle Symphony: violinists Mikhail Shmidt and Natasha Bazhanov, violist Susan Gulkis Assadi, cellist Walter Gray, double bassist Jonathan Green and pianist Jessica Choe, joined by soprano Stacey Mastrian and baritone Erich Parce.

Viewers can purchase access now that allows on-demand streaming for one week during the period between December 1 and December31, 2021.

Access to the concert for one week is $30 on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/showcase/9024141. Tickets and more information: www.musicofremembrance.org.

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