Tags: Chicago

Ted Rosenthal was inspired to write DEAR ERICH when he discovered over 200 letters (subsequently translated by Dr. Peter Schmidt) written in Germany between 1938 and 1941 by his grandmother, Herta Rosenthal, to his father, Erich, a Jewish scholar who escaped to the United States. Set in wartime Germany and Chicago, Rosenthal, a winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, employs the musical idioms of the 1930’s and 40’s to create this poignant retelling of his own family history - the heartbreaking story of a family’s dual fates – a son’s journey and new life in the New World, and the cruel demise of his family at the hands of the Nazis which he was powerless to stop.