One Voice Mixed Chorus Presents Unsilenced

One Voice Mixed Chorus (OVMC), Minnesota’s GLBT and straight-allies chorus; local synagogues Shir Tikvah, Bet Shalom, and Temple Israel; and the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota will present Unsilenced: GLBT and Jewish Voices of the Holocaust, a concert commemorating the experience of individuals in the Holocaust.

In preparation, OVMC Artistic Director Jane Ramseyer Miller worked with the Tretter Collection, the largest archive of GLBT Holocaust materials outside of Berlin; music directors of Shir Tikvah and Bet Shalom; and historians and musicologists of the Holocaust Museums in Chicago and Washington, DC.

Unsilenced’s highlight is Donald McCullough’s Holocaust Cantata, a 13-movement work with text written by concentration camp prisoners. Two additional movements using Holocaust stories of GLBT persons were commissioned by OVMC.

Janet Horvath, Associate Principal Cello with the Minnesota Orchestra, who is featured soloist for Holocaust Cantata, also will perform Max Bruch’s setting of Kol Nidre, a traditional prayer for the Day of Atonement. Horvath’s parents were concentration camp survivors. Her musician father performed throughout six years in various camps.

Unsilenced includes German cabaret music familiar to Berlin’s GLBT community of the time; “Dicke Luft,” commissioned by a gay man in Sachsenhausen, written by a Polish musician, and paid for with one-and-a-half pieces of bread; and the contemporary “Not in My Town,” concerning Montana citizens who fought anti-Semitic acts in their community.

Local concerts will be performed with synagogue choirs from Shir Tikvah and Beth Shalom (Minnetonka) joining to perform Holocaust Cantata.

Jan. 30
Temple Israel, Minneapolis
With Postperformance discussion
Jan. 31
Hopkins High School
With Postperformance Discussion
www.ovmc.org