Eric Conway writes:
Hello Morgan Fine and Performing Arts Community,
Yesterday, Sunday, April 15, 2018, the Morgan State University Choir performed Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass with the Bach in Baltimore chorus and orchestra to a sold-out house!
This
concert was part of Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Day of Remembrance at
Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Pikesville. The actual date of Yom HaShoah
worldwide was April 12, 2018. The director of the Bach in Baltimore
choir, Herb Dimmock, asked if the Morgan choir would join his choir in
this performance, marking the 30th anniversary of their group. Verdi’s Requiem
is such a beautiful and powerful work, I could not say NO to the
invitation. Beyond the beauty of the concert, the choir also learned
much about the Holocaust during the pre-concert remembrance.
You
may ask, "why sing a Catholic requiem at a synagogue?” We all learned
that during the Holocaust, there was a Jewish concentration camp,
Terizin (Czech) Theresienstadt (German), - 35 miles outside of Prague
that held as many as sixty thousand Jews captive at one time. This camp
originally was marketed by the Germans to the world as a place to
protect the elderly Jews during the War, but quickly became a huge
Jewish ghetto housing more artists and artisans than many other of the
camps. Initially, prisoners were allowed to perform their art, at least
after hours of their labor, which went far toward helping their spirit
during this surely dehumanizing time. One young imprisoned Jewish
conductor, Raphael Schächter who took his sole score of Verdi’s Requiem
with him to the concentration camp, taught Verdi’s Requiem to Jewish
prisoners by rote after hours in a cold dank basement after many hours
of slave-labor. Between 1941 and 1945, Schächter led sixteen
performances with piano by sixteen different groups of Jewish prisoners
before being sent out to the gas chambers in other camps - thus the
connection of the mass to the synagogue. In 2012, a well-scripted
documentary was created entitled “Defiant Requiem” about the story of
the Jews who sang Verdi’s Requiem directly to their German captors.
Yesterday’s concert, was sung remembering their defiant actions in the
face of their adversity. See trailer to this excellent documentary
which is a streamed-video with an Amazon Prime membership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgimWmMqav4
During
the concert, many of the actual survivors of the Holocaust were in the
auditorium, many who were weeping during the ceremony and the singing of
the music. The two choirs and soloists gave a performance that was so
riveting, that absolutely everyone in attendance had to be moved; who
also had to reflect again on this terrible time in our human history.
A
Washington Post writer once said, "twenty-two percent of millennials
are not aware of the Holocaust and two-third of millennials have never
heard of Auschwitz!” I was very proud to say at least all of the
millennials in the Morgan State University choir now know the story of
this terrible genocide in World War II - “We must never forget”.
On
May 6, 2018 at 4 PM, the Morgan State University choir will present our
annual Spring concert. We will perform excerpts from this ninety-minute
work with our own Morgan soloists! I hope that you can attend! http://www.murphyfineartscenter.org/pages/events/eventDetail.asp?eventID=14
EC
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle
************************************
Eric Conway, D.M.A.
Fine and Performing Arts Department, Chair
Morgan State University
1700 East Cold Spring Lane
Carl Murphy Fine Arts Center, Room 329C
Baltimore, MD 21251
Link to Baltimore Sun Article on Memorial Concert:
Washington Post Article on Millennials and Holocaust
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