Music of Remembrance to Present 50th World Premiere
By Afton Markay(Photo credit: Terry Lorant)
Music of Remembrance (MOR) is set to present its 50th world premiere with “The Dialogue of Memories” by Tom Cipullo and Howard Reich.
The new opera is based on Reich’s “The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel.” “The Dialogue of Memories” joins that lineage, inspired by Reich’s front-page reporting on his mother Sonia’s hidden Holocaust past – and the unlikely friendship he formed with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel as he investigated her story. Cipullo’s score echoes of Schumann, Gershwin, and Tchaikovsky into his own contemporary musical language, weaving together past and present.
Performs include Daniel Belcher, Megan Marino, and Dominic Armstrong. Media design is by Peter Crompton. Erich Parce directs and Alastair Willis conducts the MOR Chamber Ensemble.
“With The Dialogue of Memories, Music of Remembrance reaches a creative milestone: our 50th world premiere,” said MOR Artistic Director Mina Miller in a press release. “We commission work that asks audiences to bear witness – not only to history, but to the present it shapes. Reaching this landmark moment here in Seattle, with a story about who carries memory forward, feels exactly right.”
Recent MOR commissions have taken on the women’s rights struggle in Iran, the separation of families at the US-Mexico border, and the threat of nuclear war. The organization has premiered new works by more than 20 contemporary composers, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jake Heggie, Lori Laitman, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Paul Schoenfield, whose MOR commission Camp Songs was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
The world premiere of “The Dialogue of Memories” takes place May 17, at Benaroya Hall. The production will then tour the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco May 20, and the Studebaker Theater in Chicago May 23-24.
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