Tags: musicians

Dreams of Beating Time

Dreams of Beating Time is set between 1917 and 1944 in Theresienstadt (Terezín, the model camp where theatre artists and musicians were allowed to produce artistic works but eventually transported to Auschwitz), Czechoslovakia, southern Germany, Mannheim, Berlin, New York and London. The scenes are structured like dreams and recollections loosely based on actual characters and events. Among the characters in the play are Kurt Singer, the former head of the Judischer Kulturbund in the Third Reich, an organization that had been allowed to produce theatre for Jewish audiences under Nazi supervision; Kurt Gerron, a Jewish director the Nazis wanted to use to make a propaganda film in Theresienstadt; Raphael Schachter, a conductor interned in Theresienstadt, and Wilhelm Fürtwängler, the controversial conductor who did not leave Nazi Germany.

Harmony

The Comedian Harmonists, the first sensational boy band, were six talented young men who came together in 1920s Germany and took the world by storm with their signature blend of sophisticated close harmonies and uproarious stage antics, sold millions of records, starred in a dozen films and packed the houses of the most prestigious concert halls around the globe until the world they knew forever changed. Their story inspired longtime collaborators, the legendary Barry Manilow and theatre veteran Bruce Sussman, to create the original score.

Playing for Time

Based on the autobiography of Fania Fénelon, a Parisian singer who became part of the Auschwitz orchestra made up of female prisoners. The musicians play for the camp's Nazi leaders and for fellow prisoners leaving for work details and crematoria. Their position in the orchestra is a means to survival but also forces them to ask moral questions about how their artistry is being used.

Playing for Time [תזמורת על תנאי]

In the Auschwitz women’s camp there was an orchestra. Fania, a talented pianist and singer, becomes part of the orchestra. The play portrays the complex relationships between the orchestra members and the orchestra managers, and the way they deal with the horrors and hardship around them.

Un Opera pour Terezín

Commemorates the annihilation of the European Jewish artists who were confined to the ghetto of Terezín in Czechoslovakia and is structured like a Passover seder. The piece is to last all night long and to be staged in sites across the world. Forty scenes show the fate of Terezin prisoners, based on the lives of camp musicians. There are no Nazis represented in the piece.