When cellist Jason Calloway was a child, he read a story in the newspaper about David Arben, then the concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Arben spent much of his childhood in concentration camps but through his ordeal, he somehow managed to keep his violin with him and often provided music for Nazi officers. “One night Arben was awakened, along with his entire barracks, and ordered into the woods to dig a ditch and prepare to be executed,” Calloway recalls. “As the man to his side fell dead into that ditch, the commandant realized that Arben, the Jewish fiddler, was next in line, and saved his life.”
Arben would go on to a distinguished music career. But many Jewish musicians were not so lucky. The Holocaust muted, and often destroyed, the song of the Jewish people.
“A story like this one certainly moved someone of my age and experience, not having any relatives who are survivors, to act,” Calloway says.
Nancy Rubenstein, a Pittsburgh-based pianist, introduced Calloway to a large collection of scores and recordings of the music by composers whose lives or careers ended during the Holocaust. Calloway’s interest and passion were ignited. And Shir Ami was born.
Shir Ami, Hebrew for “song of my people,” is a group of professional musicians who come together to breathe life into Jewish music of the early 20th century. Part of the mission statement reads, “We give voice to the people of the Jewish diaspora whose art has been silenced, suppressed, or neglected as a result of their Jewish heritage.”
Noah Geller, concertmaster for the Kansas City Symphony, is one of Shir Ami’s musicians.
“The great thing about playing in Shir Ami is that I am always coming across new, wonderful repertoire,” Geller says. “Jason is ingenious at locating and arranging new pieces for the group, and it is always moving to ‘discover’ a piece that has had little attention over the past century.”
In late April, the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education sponsored a student outreach concert featuring traditional Yiddish music, composers of the St. Petersburg School and the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish Jew who fled Nazi-occupied Europe for the Soviet Union.
“While the Nazi regime banned and silenced many living composers in the 1930s and 40s, they also effectively obscured the work of pioneers like the St. Petersburg School, who are considered the fathers of Jewish art music,” Geller says. “We are attempting to bring this repertoire to life and to give it a convincing performance.”
This convincing performance will take place on May 2 at Congregation Beth Torah.
The musicians of Shir Ami are Lolita Lisovskaya-Sayevic (piano), Noah Geller (violin), Jason Calloway (cello), Michael Klotz (viola), and Rachel Calloway (mezzo-soprano). “We are playing the same music for the students that we will be playing in our community-wide event on May 2,” Geller says. “And an exciting addition, all the way from Germany, is my aunt, Katharina Muether, who happens to be a professional accordion player specializing in Jewish folk music. She will perform some folk music and give context to the music that we are presenting.”
The musicians always “give context” during their concerts: “We are all involved in talking about the music that we play. These descriptions give the audience something to think about during the performance — something in the music to focus on while we play,” Geller says.
In June 2015, Shir Ami presented a concert at Beth Torah entitled “Forbidden Music of the Holocaust,” featuring the music of composers whose works were banned during the Nazi era. “The Kansas City community has been a wonderful and supportive asset for Shir Ami,” Geller says. “As long as people want to hear us play, we will continue performing in Kansas City.”
And there’s so much more music to be heard.
“There are quite literally tens of thousands of composers and musicians who perished during the Holocaust. I won’t live long enough to shed light on all of them,” says Calloway.
Shir Ami will perform at 7 p.m. May 2 at Congregation Beth Torah, 6100 W. 127th Street, Overland Park. Tickets cost $20 in advance, $25 at the door and $10 for students. For tickets, call 913.327.8077, or email Jill Maidhof.
