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 on April 26 at the Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration at Queens University of Charlotte’s Sandra Levine Theatre. The work will receive a second performance on April 28 at 7:30 pm at a concert 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 UNC Charlotte musicologist James A. Grymes. Published by HarperCollins in 2014, Violins of Hope 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 of which 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 one decade ago, it is fitting that Charlotte host the song cycle’s East Coast premiere. To bring that music and the profound history it embodies to Charlotte audiences, the College of Arts + Architecture has collaborated with the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center, Queens University Department of Music, Central Piedmont Community College, and the seven institutional members of the Charlotte Yom HaShoah Committee: Jewish Family Services, Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte, Levine JCC, the Butterfly Project at Levine JCC, Temple Beth El, Temple Israel, and the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust.
An orchestra of professional and student musicians from UNC Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College, and Queens University of Charlotte will join the soloists, Assistant Professor of Voice Audrey Babcock, mezzo-soprano, and special guest violinist Dr. Mikylah Myers of West Virginia University. Intonations also features youth violinist David Karpov. Dr. Alan Yamamoto will conduct.
The Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration on April 26 will take place at 7 pm and is free and open to the public. More information is available at https://www.stangreensponcenter.org/events/.
Information and tickets for the April 28 concert at UNC Charlotte, which also features music by Bernstein and Mahler, are available at https://coaa.charlotte.edu/events/orchestra-songs-violins-hope.