Music in Desperate Times: Remembering the Women's Orchestra of Birkenau

Ars Choralis, a non-profit organization of 48 amateur singers, will perform "Music in Desperate Times: Remembering the Women's Orchestra of Birkenau"

Saturday, March 28th at 8:00pm

WHERE:
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave.
New York, NY 10025
212.316.7490

COST:
$150 (dress circle), $45 (front reserved), $35 (front unreserved), $25 (house) http://tinyurl.com/Tickets-for-Performance or 866.811.4111.

WHAT:
"Music in Desperate Times: Remembering the Women's Orchestra of Birkenau" is a concert - presented by the Woodstock, N.Y.-based choral ensemble Ars Choralis - that interweaves orchestral music with spoken memoirs to bring back the voices and music of the only World War II women's orchestra. Though over one million people were murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers, the lives of this small group of female prisoners were spared because they played beautiful music.
Based on personal memoirs and historical records, "Music in Desperate Times" will tell the story of this extraordinary group of women through readings, choral music and representative orchestral music played in the camps (Schumann, Chopin, Puccini and traditional music).
The musicians will don lavender scarves and white blouses similar to those worn by the Birkenau musicians and recreate the unusual instrumentation of the original ensemble: violins, mandolins, accordion, recorder, flute, cello, piano and percussion.

Photo by Andrea B. Stern

WHO:
Ars Choralis is a nonprofit organization composed of 48 highly disciplined amateur singers dedicated to celebrating the human spirit through the performance of choral music of all periods and styles. They will be accompanied at this event by a small orchestra made up of professional and non-professional instrumentalists representing the Birkenau orchestra.
PHOTOS:
http://shorefire.com/clients/musicindesperatetimes

Isle of Klezbos

Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Mardi Gras Special at Drom
female-fueled bands, Eastern European sounds, East Village energy!
ISLE OF KLEZBOS and SANDA WEIGL's Gypsy in a Tree
Mistress of Ceremonies: "Lavinia Co-op" of Bloolips!
7:30pm - 10:30pm (doors open at 7PM)
DROM NYC
85 Avenue A near E. 6th St
New York, NY 10009
212-757-1157
$15. + minimum, full tapas menu and bar
http://dromnyc.com
PHOTO CREDIT Isle of Klezbos pic: Anita Briggs

7:30pm Isle of Klezbos with guest singer Mira Stroika!
ISLE OF KLEZBOS:
Soulful, fun-loving powerhouse all-gal klezmer sextet finding the sublime and subversive in Yiddish roots music since 1998. Outmusic Awardwinning Isle of Klezbos has toured from Vienna to Vancouver. "Great ears & great hearts" - Pakn Treger
"Isle of Klezbos tests the elasticity of the genre" - The New Yorker
"Talent as strong as their name is provocative" - Courier News
Pam Fleming: trumpet/flugelhorn, Debra Kreisberg: clarinet/sax, Saskia Lane: bass, Eve Sicular: drums PLUS guest artistes extraordinaires - Shoko Nagai: piano/accordion AND Mira Stroika: vocals, accordion + piano http://metropolitanklezmer.com/islebios.html

9:00pm Sanda Weigl's "Gypsy in a Tree" (Shoko Nagai, piano & accordion Satoshi Takeishi, percussion; Ben Stapp. tuba; & the amazing Sanda, vocals)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95571973

Mardi Gras guest hostess Lavinia Co-op!
A charter member of London's drag vaudeville troupe Bloolips, Lavinia will grace our Drom Phat Tuesday festivities as Mistress of Ceremonies; no telling what she'll do!

Full coverage AND tickets for this extravaganza: http://dromnyc.com/home/index.php?option=com_gigcal&task=details&gigcal_gigs_id=545&Itemid=37
Table reservations available: reservations@dromnyc.com

SANDA WEIGL page at NPR's website & ISLE OF KLEZBOS website -- scroll for links below. and for a taste of Shoko's and Mira's music, as well as
Isle of Klezbos on MySpace... http://myspace.com/klezbos
Shoko Nagai:
http://myspace.com/shokonagai
Mira Stroika:
http://myspace.com/mirastroika

Zamir Chorale with Newton Choral Society March 8

Come to Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, MA
Sunday, March 8 at 3:00 p.m.
to be inspired by great music performed by two acclaimed choral ensembles.
March will be abloom this year with beautiful music, as Zamir performs its spring concert two months earlier than usual. This year we have partnered with the Newton Choral Society to produce a program of musical masterworks, featuring a combined force of 120 voices.

There are four wonderful works on this concertincluding Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein; choral cycle Mo’adim (Festivals) by Mordecai Seter, and more. Tickets can be ordered through the Zamir websitewww.zamir.org
or by calling 617-244-6333.

There are four wonderful works on this concert. Leonard Bernstein composed his Chichester Psalms in 1965. Dean Hussey, who commissioned the work, wrote “I think many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of ‘West Side Story’ about the music.” He was not disappointed. In fact Bernstein included in the Psalms a chorus that was originally intended for West Side Story. Today Chichester Psalms is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century choral works.

Mordecai Seter served for many years as professor of composition at the Rubin Academy of Tel Aviv University. His choral cycle Mo’adim (Festivals) was composed in 1946 and dedicated to the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir. Each of the movements is based on a melody traditionally sung by Babylonian Jews. Seter’s style as revealed in this work will remind our listeners of other neo-primitive works, such Orff’s Carmina Burana

Randall Thompson composed his Peaceable Kingdom in 1936, inspired by the words of the prophet Isaiah and a painting by the American artist Edwards Hicks. In a series of magnificent double choruses, Thompson interprets the words of the Hebrew prophet from warnings to destruction to promises of ultimate redemption.

An accomplished young composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has quickly become one of the most popular and most widely performed composers of his generation. In the spring of 1996 the Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann (now Whitacre’s wife) gave her boyfriend five short poems in Hebrew to be set to music. The result was Five Hebrew Love Songs, a luscious romantic musical ode.

Long-lost Mendelssohn Piece will bePerformed in Austin

Mendelssohn is have a good year in 2009. Last month in New York, the Museum of Jewish Heritage held concerts of some "new" Mendelssohn works... newly rehearsed after some 100 years. This Saturday Feb 21, 2009, the Austin Civic Orchestra will perform "Fantasy and Variations for Two Pianos and Orchestra on the Gypsy March from Weber's 'Preziosa' " by Felix Mendelssohn. This will be the first time this piece has been heard since 1833. The manuscript piece, never published, and first performed by Ignaz Moscheles and Felix Mendelssohn was set aside and later owned by Anton Rubinstein. After he donated it, it was lost in the archive of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia for over a hundred years. Southwestern University professor J. Michael Cooper and Jonathan Bellman of the University of Northern Colorado, have painstakingly reconstructed the work. It will be performed on Saturday evening. There are still hundreds of Mendelssohn manuscript scores yet to be found and resurrected. Read the entire story from Austin 360.com at:
http://www.austin360.com/news/content/arts/stories/2009/02/0216mendelssohn.html
Concert: 8 p.m. Saturday Feb. 21
Alma Thomas Theatre, Southwestern Univ.
1001 E. University Ave., Georgetown.
$15. purchase tickets at www.austincivicorchestra.org