Members of the Newark High School
Choirs, instrumental soloists Sharon
Song and Anna Dmytrenko, and vocal
soloists Krystal Rickard,
Amy Poznansky, and Erick
Bayne will perform
The
Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the
Camps, composed by
Donald McCullough, director of
Washington DC's Master Chorale.
The work will
be performed at 2:00
p.m. on Sunday, May 3 in
the
Newark High School Auditorium.
Admission is $5, and donations to
aid the Holocaust Survivor
Scholarship Fund will also be
accepted. For more
information, please contact
Penny Carmack.
The composer, David McCullough, had
several compositions drawn from the
U.S. Holocaust Museum translated
into English and set them for
chorus, soloists, cello and piano.
He
crafted the piece after immersing
himself in the Aleksander
Kulisiewicz Collection at the U.S.
Holocaust Museum. Imprisoned
for antifascist activities in
Poland, Mr. Kulisiewicz spent the
war at the Sachsenhausen camp
near
Berlin where, he took on the role of
camp troubadour, performing his own
songs and those of his fellow
prisoners. After the War, he
crisscrossed the former Reich
compiling music that had been
composed by inmates of the camps.
McCullough spent a year on the
project, extracting from the U.S.
Holocaust Museum archives the
material that formed the basis of
the Holocaust Cantata. According to
American Record Guide, His
arrangements, interspersed with
writings by those forced to endure
the unendurable, make for a gripping
commentary on the resilience of
gentle souls caught in the vortex of
human depravity at its worst. The
songs, as you'd expect, are
heart-rendering in their simplicity
and their sadness.
(Courtesy of Albany Records, Albany,
NY)
Click here to view or print
event flyer.
Click here to learn more about
the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
