ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Local musicians, Polyphony, will conduct a moving performance of the Holocaust Cantata for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and offered a preview of the live music in studio.
The international memorial day falls on Saturday, Jan. 27 and commemorates the tragedy of the Holocaust that occurred during World War II.
Donald McCullough’s Holocaust Cantata is based on research of original music sung by incarcerated inmates in Holocaust concentration camps. This 40-minute cantata is an emotional, musical journey through one of the bleakest episodes in human history.
Working from translations of original Polish materials found in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and starting with just a single line of melody, McCullough has fashioned a haunting choral tribute to the 6 million Jews who were systematically persecuted and murdered as well as to the millions of other individuals the Nazi Party classified as “undesirables,” including Poles, Romanian gypsies, homosexuals, transsexuals, political opponents, religious dissidents, the mentally ill and the physically disabled. What emerges from the insanity of one of history’s worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man is a sense of music’s life-affirming powers.
On Jan. 27 in 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Red Army.
The Holocaust Cantata will be performed on Saturday, Jan. 27 at the Cathedral of St. John, 318 Silver Ave. SW. The event will begin at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20-$25.
For more information, visit the the Polyphony website.
