Eastman School of Music faculty members, students, and alumni will join the worldwide observance of Yom HaShoah by performing the Fifth Annual Holocaust Remembrance Concert at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 15, in Kilbourn Hall. Entitled “A Time to Remember . . .”, the concert features music written by those who perished or survived the World War II concentration and work camps, as well as music written in tribute to those who died. The series of annual concerts was launched in 2014 by Professor of Violin Renée Jolles. Her father, Jerome Jolles, buried bodies as part of a work detail in Romania during the Nazi occupation. He survived and came to the United States, where he finished his studies at Juilliard in music performance and composition. A virtuoso accordion player, piano teacher, and composer, Mr. Jolles died in January 2014.
The concert will feature works by Erwin Schulhoff, an adventurous modernist composer who died of tuberculosis at the Wülzburg concentration camp; Roman Ryterband (right), who escaped to a work camp in Switzerland just before the borders closed in 1939, while most of his family perished in the death camps, and later became a prolific composer of classical music and popular songs in Canada and the US; Leo Smit, a Dutch composer of chamber and vocal music, was murdered at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland; Hans Krasa, best-known for his children’s opera Brundibár containing anti-Nazi symbolism, was sentenced to Terezin camp but died in Auschwitz; and Lowell Liebermann, an American composer, represented in this concert with settings of poems by Nobel prize-winning author Nelly Sachs, known for her poetry about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.
In addition to Jolles, performers in “A Time to Remember . . .” include Eastman faculty members and guest performers: Bonita Boyd, flute; Tony Caramia, Chih-Yun Hsiao and Irina Lupines, piano; George Taylor, viola; Steven Doane, cello; Susan Jolles, harp; Richard Killmer, oboe; Kenneth Grant, clarinet; George Sakakeeny, bassoon; Kelly Whitesell, soprano; and Peter Kurau, horn.
Sunday, April 15, 2018 | 7:30 PM
5th Annual Holocaust Remembrance Concert: “A Time to Remember . . .”
Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
26 Gibbs Street, Rochester, NY 14604
Tickets (at the door): $10 General Public, free to UR ID holders
Info: esm.rochester.edu
Kosher reception generously provided by Temple Beth El of Rochester
[Sources: press release, esm.rochester.edu, jewishrochester.org]