MOR to Make Fourth Annual Visit to Bay Area

Soprano Roslyn Barak, courtesy of Music of Remembrance

Readers may recall that, near the end of May of last year, the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) hosted the third annual visit to the Bay Area by the Seattle-based musicians of Music of Remembrance (MOR). This organization has the mission of remembering the Holocaust through music with concert performances, educational programs, recordings, and commissions of new works. This month it will return to present its fourth annual concert.

The program will present premiere performances of two new compositions. The first of these will be “Snow Falls” by Ryuichi Sakamoto. The piece is a concert treatment of the melodies he composed for the film Nagasaki: Memories of My Son, setting a poem of the same title by Kiyoko Nagase. The second will be Christophe Chagnard’s “Gaman,” a multimedia work that addresses the experiences of American citizens of Japanese ancestry that were forced into incarceration camps during World War II. In addition soprano Roslyn Barak will interpret songs written and performed by prisoners held by the Nazis in the Tererzín concentration camp. Finally, there will be a performance of Paul Schoenfield’s Sparks of Glory, a suite of four portraits of Holocaust defiance.

This concert will again take place in the SFCM Concert Hall. The entrance is at 50 Oak Street, halfway between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street and a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 24, and should last about two hours. Premium tickets in rows A through J of the Center section will be $60. All other tickets will be $45. These will include specific seats designated for wheelchair access, and a seat can also be allocated for the companion of the wheelchair user. Online ticket sales are being managed by Brown Paper Tickets, but the order form has been set up on the event page for this concert on the Music of Remembrance Web site. Tickets may also be ordered in advance by calling 206-365-7770.

There will also be a post-concert reception for meeting the contributing artists over wine and hors d’oeuvres. The reception will begin immediately after the performance. Tickets are $100 and may be purchased both through the event page and by telephone.