NICK STRIMPLE
Composer - Conductor -
Scholar - Author
NICK STRIMPLE |
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In the Spotlight |
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(Immediate Release – Miami, FL – September 26, 2006)
Florida Premiere of “The Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps”Festival Miami 2006 Presents “MOTHERS, FATHERS, SISTERS, AND BROTHERS”
World-renowned Holocaust music scholar, Nick Strimple and University of Miami Frost School of Music faculty led by Jo-Michael Scheibe join together to present “Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, and Brothers.” Featured on the program is the Florida premiere of “The Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps.” Presented by Festival Miami, the concert begins at 4:00 p.m. Sunday, October 15, 2006 in the Maurice Gusman Concert Hall on the University of Miami Campus. This event is sponsored in part by Funding Arts Network, Inc.
“Giving voice to the millions who perished and those who survived the Holocaust is a daunting task,” says Strimple. “It is an honor to participate in the twenty-third Annual Festival Miami, working with renowned colleagues to bring the Holocaust Cantata to the Southeast Florida community.”
Jo-Michael Scheibe, Professor and Program Director of Choral Studies at the University’s Frost School of Music, has put together a three-part multi-media program of music and images. Part I, dedicated to mothers, highlights works by Brazilian, Spanish, German, Estonian, Creole and Canadian composers. Works include Lars Jansson’s (b. 1951) “To the Mothers in Brazil,” Tomas Luis de Victori’s (1548-1611) “Salve Regina” and “For the Fallen” a work by Eleanor Daley (b. 1955) written for Laurence Binyon’s poem of the same title.
Part II is devoted to Music of the Ghettos, including pieces by three prominent Czech composers who suffered in concentration camps. “Elegia from Suita Balladica” written by Petr Eben (b. 1929), a Buchenwald survivor, will be performed along with two of the “Four Songs on Chinese Poems” by Pavel Haas who was imprisoned in Theresienstadt and perished in October 1944 at Auschwitz. Also on the program is “Ukolébavka” (Lullaby) by Gideon Klein who was imprisoned in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz and transferred to Furstengrubbe concentration camp where he died in January 1945.
In Part III, the concert finishes with the “The Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps.” First premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1998, the Cantata will be narrated by Nick Strimple, member of the Choral Music and Vocal Arts faculty at University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and Kimberly Daniel de Acha, Assistant Professor of Voice at Frost School of Music. The Cantata, arranged by Donald McCullough, is a compelling and deeply moving work based on songs and letters written by Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Originally in Polish, the prisoners’ songs - each representing a different time in the Holocaust experience - were discovered in the Aleksander Kulisiewicz Collection at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Also in the Kulisiewicz Collection were letters, articles and interviews about life in the camps. Working with these archival materials, McCullough shaped the Cantata, placing between each musical arrangement readings that speak of the concentration camp experience.
Festival Miami, “MOTHERS, FATHERS, SISTERS, AND BROTHERS” begins at 4:00 p.m. Sunday, October 15, 2006 in the Maurice Gusman Concert Hall located at 1314 Miller Drive (University of Miami Campus), Coral Gables, Florida. General Admission Tickets: $20 Adult, $15 Senior, $10 Student. Visit www.music.miami.edu/festivalmiami to purchase tickets or call 305.284.4940.
About Nick Strimple: A faculty member at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California since 1996, Strimple is also director of music at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church. Born in Amarillo, Texas, he was educated at Baylor University and the University of Southern California. Strimple is well-known as a scholar whose interests include 20th century music, Jewish music, the music of Dvořák and other Czech composers, the aesthetics of sacred music, and virtually all aspects of choral music.
Strimple’s critically acclaimed book, “Choral Music in the Twentieth Century,” was released in 2002. Recognized internationally for his work with Holocaust music, he has lectured on the subject at Yale University, Oxford University, Wellesley College, and other distinguished institutions, and served for ten years as a consultant to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. Strimple has presented and performed Holocaust music programs throughout the United States and Europe. During 2001-02, Strimple served on the California State Legislature Working Group for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education, and currently serves as vice president of the David Nowakowsky Foundation.
About Festival
Miami: The Festival has become a staple in the Southeast Florida
cultural milieu that essentially launches the fall season. Its quality,
scope, and variety have for twenty-three years enriched the cultural
landscape in ways that reflect and reinforce Miami’s rich diversity.
Since its founding in 1926, The Frost School of Music has maintained a
long-standing tradition of serving as an important educational and
cultural focal point for the community, and Festival Miami is a
premiere manifestation of that commitment. The international character
of the Festival, its unique programming, and the high quality of its
performing artists are worthy of world-wide attention. |
REVIEWS Book: Choral Music in the Twentieth Century “Everyone with a love of choral music – whether composer, conductor, singer or just fond admirer – should have this eloquent book in their library. Strimple, a gifted and articulate writer, has produced a volume that is easy, enjoyable and enlightening to read . . . Finally, the strongest endorsement I can offer is that this text is required reading for my graduate students.” [James Dearing, American Music Teacher, April/May 2006]
Recording: Judith Lang Zaimont: Meditations for the New Year “Nick Strimple’s Choral Society of Southern California gives a tremendous choral performance. With crisp diction, the sense that they know what they’re singing about, and an heroic job of maintaining pitch.” [Classical Archives, January 2006 (#94)]
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| © 2017 Nick Strimple | (213) 821-5756 | strimple@usc.edu | |