A new song cycle about violins recovered from the Holocaust will be the centerpiece of Charlotte’s Holocaust Remembrance Day event, the Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration.
Presented by the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture in partnership with community and educational partners, “Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope” will receive its East Coast premiere Tuesday, April 26, at the Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration at Queens University of Charlotte’s Sandra Levine Theatre. A second performance of the work will be at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 28, in the Anne R. Belk Theater in Robinson Hall. Five "Violins of Hope" will be present at both performance events.
In April 2012, UNC Charlotte led a collaboration among organizations across the Charlotte community to present the North American premiere of Violins of Hope, a collection of violins that belonged to Jews before and during the Holocaust, restored by Israeli violinmaker Amnon Weinstein. The extensive series of exhibitions, performances and related programs gained international attention. In the decade since, more than 20 cities across the United States and Europe have hosted these remarkable instruments.
An important outcome of the Violins of Hope residency in Charlotte was the publication of the critically acclaimed book “Violins of Hope: Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour,” written by Charlotte musicologist James Grymes. The work, published by HarperCollins in 2014, won a National Jewish Book Award.
The powerful stories in Grymes's book inspired a new musical work by librettist Gene Scheer and composer Jake Heggie. “Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope” is a dramatic cycle of songs, the first five recount stories from “Violins of Hope: Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour” told from the perspective of the violin. “Intonations” received its world premiere in January 2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area, in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Because “Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope” draws from Grymes’s book and because Charlotte was the first American city to present the collection a decade ago, it is fitting that Charlotte host the song cycle’s East Coast premiere.
Read more on the College of Arts + Architecture website.