Download Album Cover*

Fugitive Footsteps

Remembrance Music

Laurence Sherr composer

Release Date: March 10, 2023
Catalog #: NV6492
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Chamber
Vocal Music
Cello
Clarinet
Piano

Laurence Sherr delves deep into the spirit of resilience with FUGITIVE FOOTSTEPS: REMEMBRANCE MUSIC. Not shying away from musically pointing to suffering and despair, Sherr paints a vivid picture of persecution, trauma, and survivor’s guilt but also of silent and active opposition, hope, renewal, and the eventual overcoming of adversity. Through remembrance and tribute, these compositions unapologetically aim to tell stories of Holocaust resistance and survival, not only in concept but also in their individual tonal language: at all times fully conscious of their cultural roots, vast heritage, a sacrosanct sense of belonging, and the duty of defending these treasures. But perhaps, even more, these works reveal pathways to clearer, brighter horizons.

Listen

Hear the full album on YouTube

Stream/Buy

Choose your platform

Buy Album: Amazon (CD & download) Qobuz (24-bit download)

"Somber and moving."

American Record Guide

"Profound beauty."

Fanfare

Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Sonata for Cello and Piano–Mir zaynen do!: I. Resolute Laurence Sherr Inbal Megiddo, cello; Jian Liu, piano 7:09
02 Sonata for Cello and Piano–Mir zaynen do!: II. From another realm Laurence Sherr Inbal Megiddo, cello; Jian Liu, piano 9:21
03 Sonata for Cello and Piano–Mir zaynen do!: III. Partisan march Laurence Sherr Inbal Megiddo, cello; Jian Liu, piano 9:10
04 Khayele’s Waltz Laurence Sherr Deborah Rawson, clarinet; Inbal Megiddo, cello 3:26
05 Fugitive Footsteps Laurence Sherr Cory Schantz, baritone; Kennesaw State University Chamber Singers | Samuel Miller, conductor 14:31
06 Khayele’s Waltz Laurence Sherr Friedrich Edelmann, bassoon; Rebecca Rust, cello 3:43
07 Flame Language Laurence Sherr Heather Witt, mezzo-soprano; John Warren, clarinet; Charae Krueger, cello; Robert Henry, piano; John Lawless, percussion; David Kehler, conductor; 11:10
08 Elegy and Vision Laurence Sherr Inbal Megiddo, cello 8:51

Sonata for Cello and Piano–Mir zaynen do!, Khayele’s Waltz, Elegy and Vision
Recorded July 28–29 & 31, 2019 at Adam Concert Room in Wellington, New Zealand 
Producer Donald Maurice
Engineer Graham Kennedy

Fugitive Footsteps
Recorded November 12–13, 2021 at Morgan Hall in Kennesaw GA 
Artistic Advisor Leslie Blackwell
Engineers Matthew Southern, Collin Derrick

Khayele’s Waltz
Recorded live on November 2, 2020 at Synagoge Altenkunstadt in Altenkunstadt, Germany 
Engineer Joerg Marxen

Flame Language
Recorded January 29–30, 2021 at Morgan Hall in Kennesaw GA 
Engineers Joseph Greenway, Mark Fucito

Editing & Mixing Mark Fucito 
Mastering Melanie Montgomery

Cover photo by Laurence Sherr

Executive Producer Bob Lord

A&R Director Brandon MacNeil
A&R Chris Robinson

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell 
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming, Morgan Hauber
Publicity Patrick Niland

Artist Information

Laurence Sherr

Composer

Laurence Sherr is recognized for his uniquely interconnected work on music related to the Holocaust, uniting his activities as composer of remembrance music, researcher, lecturer, producer of remembrance events, author, and educator. He has presented this work in the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, England, Norway, San Marino, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and across the United States. Containing “sacred beauty and abundant lyricism,” and “moments that convey energy, lyricism, drama, and bravado” (EarRelevant), Sherr’s album – FUGITIVE FOOTSTEPS: REMEMBRANCE MUSIC – was awarded a Gold Medal in the Global Music Awards. He designs events that feature remembrance music enriched by stories of Holocaust-era creators and concurrent musical and historical developments.

Learn More

Inbal Megiddo

cello

Cellist Inbal Megiddo has performed as soloist in many of the major concert halls around the world, including recitals at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Staatsoper Berlin, with concerto performances at the Berlin Philharmonie with the Berlin Symphony. Maestro Zubin Mehta describes her as “an extremely talented, very musical musician.” At her New York debut at the Lincoln Center her playing was hailed by the press as having “magical expression and technical expertise.” She has a “warm lustrous communicative way… the performance was sincerity personified!”

Megiddo gave the New Zealand premieres of the Weinberg, Villa Lobos, and Barber cello concertos, with her playing described as “Superb!…Virtuosic, brilliant and powerful.” Radio and television appearances include performances on stations in the United States, Israel, New Zealand, and Germany. Other highlights include solo performances with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Bournemouth Symphony, Ukraine Philharmonic, Lithuanian Philharmonic, and Israel Chamber Orchestra, collaborations with preeminent conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Shlomo Mintz, and Lior Shambadal, and tours throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. A proponent of new music, she has collaborated with, premiered, and recorded the works of several leading composers, among them Jan Radzynski’s Cello Concerto in New York, and works by Laurence Sherr, Lori Laitman, Ross Harris, Michael Williams, and John Psathas.

Megiddo holds degrees from Yale University where she studied with renowned cellist Aldo Parisot. An avid chamber musician, Megiddo is a founding member of the Te Koki Trio. She has held the position of principal and guest principal cellist with the Bridgeport, Waterbury, Orchestra Wellington, and West Eastern Divan Symphony Orchestras. Recent recordings include Debussy’s cello sonata and piano trio (with Te Koki Trio) for Atoll and Naxos, nominated for Best Classical Album at the New Zealand Music Awards, and Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano for Rattle Records.

Megiddo is Associate Professor in Cello at the New Zealand School of Music. She has held faculty positions at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Yale University, and has been guest artist at festivals including the International Cello Congress in Japan and Israel, Beijing International Chamber Music Festival, and Melbourne Cello Festival. She has given masterclasses at institutions around the world and is founder and director of the Cellophonia International Festival in Wellington.

Megiddo performs on a Fiorini cello and was awarded use of a Stradivarius cello on loan by the Stradivari Society.

Jian Liu

piano

An internationally celebrated concert pianist, Dr. Jian Liu has performed throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. His artistry has taken him to some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Steinway Hall in New York, Sprague Hall, and Woolsey Hall of Yale University, and Paul Hall of Juilliard School, and as a featured soloist with orchestras including Symphony Orchestra of National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine, China National Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, and Yale Philharmonia, among others. He has also recorded many CDs, one of which, Debussy Sonatas and Piano Trio, has been nominated as Best Classical Artist in the New Zealand Music Awards.

Liu has been awarded many prizes in international competitions including the Horowitz International Piano Competition (Ukraine), the Missouri Southern International Competition (United States), and has been featured in festivals in many countries including Auckland (New Zealand), Idyllwild (United States), Beijing (China), Lausanne (Switzerland), and Krakow (Poland). He has also been an adjudicator for several international music competitions, and his performances have been broadcast by various TV and radio stations including KPHO public radio (United States), CCTV (China), Suisse Romande Radio (Switzerland), Krakow Radio (Poland), Kan Radio (Israel), and Radio New Zealand.

As a dedicated and enthusiastic chamber musician, Liu is the founding pianist of Te Kōkī Trio, the resident trio at New Zealand School of Music. The trio has appeared in various chamber series in Singapore, China, Australia, and New Zealand. Liu has also collaborated with many world-class musicians, including cellist Jian Wang, clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist Alexandre Lecarme, violinist Sarita Kwok, and pianists Boris Berman, Claude Frank, and Maria João Pires.

As a passionate performer, Liu is equally committed to education and served for four years on the faculty of the Yale Department of Music. He is currently the Programme Director of Classical Performance and Head of Piano Studies at New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, where he has established his reputation as an outstanding pedagogue and overseen the development of the classical performance curriculum. Liu studied with Professor Jin Zhang in China and with Caio Pagano in the United States. He completed his Master of Music, and Doctor and Master of Musical Arts degrees at Yale School of Music, where he was a student and assistant of Professor Claude Frank.

Deborah Rawson

clarinet

Formerly Head of Woodwinds at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University, Deborah Rawson studied clarinet at Canterbury University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. She returned to New Zealand and became known as a soloist, chamber and orchestral player, university tutor, and founding member and leader of several ensembles – The Zelanian Ensemble, Saxcess, The Kugels, and others.

Orchestral activities have included principal clarinet of Orchestra Wellington and orchestral soloist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, playing all members of the clarinet and saxophone families. She has performed as a soloist or chamber ensemble musician in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Singapore, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Australia, and toured frequently in New Zealand for Chamber Music New Zealand, Arts on Tour New Zealand, and most of the international festivals of New Zealand.

She has premiered two concertos written for her and commissioned numerous works for clarinet and saxophone by New Zealand composers. She is a featured artist on many CDs, soundtracks for the New Zealand music industry, and CDs with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Recently a recipient of the Lilburn Citation Award for outstanding services to the music of Aotearoa, Rawson’s goal is to continue to commission and disseminate the great works of New Zealand composers.

Cory Schantz

baritone

Cory Schantz has been described as possessing a voice of uncommon beauty and having a captivating stage manner that moves audiences with honest characterizations, whether comedic, dramatic, or heartfelt. His performances have been called “handsomely sung” and he has been recognized by the Baltimore Sun as an “engaging presence on stage.”

In recent years, Schantz has performed with Opera Birmingham as Lord Capulet in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Amonasro in Spotlight on Opera’s concert version of Aida. Schantz has performed the role of Giorgio Germont with Rimrock Opera and Winter Opera of St. Louis and has performed multiple principal roles with The Atlanta Opera, including Le Duc in Roméo et Juliette and Count Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto. In 2012, he appeared in Tulsa Opera’s stirring production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, a performance hailed by critics as the finest production by the company in a decade. In addition, he has also performed principal roles with Wichita Grand Opera, Springfield Regional Opera, Union Avenue Opera, and First Coast Opera.

In 2021, Schantz made his Charleston Symphony debut with Mendelssohn’s rarely performed Die Erste Walpurgisnacht. He also appeared in Kennesaw State University’s Kristallnacht observance, performing Laurence Sherr’s moving Fugitive Footsteps. In March 2020, he performed the baritone solos in Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Atlanta Wind Symphony. Schantz made his Carnegie Hall debut in April 2018 as baritone soloist in Handel’s Messiah. He has performed the same work with the Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Enid Symphony Orchestra, Billings Messiah Festival, and Brazos Chamber Orchestra. Other works in his repertoire include Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Mozart’s Requiem, and Faure’s Requiem.

An active recitalist, Schantz has presented recitals at Reinhardt University, Middle Tennessee State University, Austin Peay State University, University of New Hampshire, Elon University, and others. In 2023, he will have the honor of presenting the world premiere of Daron Hagen’s Four Shakespeare Fragments, a cycle written for him.

Schantz makes his home near Atlanta GA, where he serves on the voice faculty of Reinhardt University.

Samuel Miller

conductor

Samuel Miller currently serves as Assistant Director of Choral Activities in the Dr. Bobbie Bailey School of Music at Kennesaw State University; he conducts the KSU Chamber Singers, Chorale, and Men’s Ensemble and teaches courses in choral conducting and music theory. At KSU, he was honored to conduct the Chamber Singers in a performance of John Rutter’s Requiem for a 20-year commemoration of the September 11 attacks.

Prior to his appointment at KSU, Miller was on the faculty at LaGrange College where he served as Director of Choral Activities and oversaw the music education program. He also has over a decade of experience teaching high school choir in Georgia. While studying at the University of Kentucky, Miller conducted the U.K. Choristers and was assistant director of the U.K. Men’s Chorus. He also has considerable experience with community and church choirs and is the current Artistic Director of the Kennesaw State University Community and Alumni Choir.

His work has included preparation for national and divisional American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) conferences, Kentucky and Georgia Music Educators Association conferences, an Intercollegiate Male Chorus seminar, and large scale works by Brahms, Berlioz, and several others.

Miller is active within the Georgia Music Educators Association (GMEA) and has served in several leadership roles. He is currently an adjudicator and clinician for GMEA, Association of Christian Schools International, and Georgia Association of Private & Parochial Schools. He is also a member of ACDA and National Association for Music Education. Miller performs with the Orpheus Men’s Ensemble based in Atlanta. During the summer, he is on faculty of the Csehy Summer School of Music in Langhorne PA.

Kennesaw State University Chamber Singers

The Kennesaw State University Chamber Singers is the premiere auditioned choral ensemble at the university and is comprised exclusively of undergraduate students, primarily music majors. The KSU Chamber Singers have performed at national, regional, and state conferences of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO), American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and Georgia Music Educators Association (GMEA). In 2010, the choir sang at the ACDA Southern Division Conference, presenting music of South America. In 2013, the KSU Chamber Singers were selected to perform at the NCCO’s 5th National Conference, performing David Maslanka’s masterwork A Litany for Courage and the Seasons. They performed for the fifth time by invitation at the GMEA state conference in 2018 and were honored to be selected to perform at the 2020 ACDA Southern Division Conference.

Friedrich Edelmann and Rebecca Rust

bassoon and cello

The American cellist Rebecca Rust, former student of Margaret Rowell, Bernard Greenhouse, and Mstislav Rostropovich, and German bassoonist Friedrich Edelmann, former principal bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under the principal conductors Sergiu Celibidache and James Levine as well as under guest conductors Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, Carlos Kleiber, Carlo Maria Giulini, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Erich Leinsdorf, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Rafael Kubelik, and Seiji Ozawa, are concertizing and recording regularly as a cello-bassoon duo and together with piano as a trio in Europe, the United States, and Japan.

Their Japanese appearances include performances at the Imperial Palace of Japan in Tokyo in front of Their Majesties Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko and private music-making with Empress Michiko on the piano. In 2017 they were participants in the international Forfest Festival in the Czech Republic, performing mostly music composed for them. Fifteen internationally available CDs are published by Cavalli Records, Bayer Records, Naxos (Marco Polo), and Tudor. For Centaur Records, they recorded The Great Conversation (2018) and Songs Without Words (2019) with compositions by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and premiere recordings of compositions by Georges Enesco, Donald Francis Tovey, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Robert Kahn, Hans Gál, Karl Michael Komma, and others.

Rust and Edelmann performed in 2020 at Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles on the invitation of the German General Consul of Los Angeles, Stefan Schneider. In 2021 they performed as soloists with the AudiMus Orchestra in Longarone, Italy in memory of 2000 victims of the Vajont Dam accident of 1963. In 2021 they produced the film Musiken Jüdischer Komponisten – Musicale of Jewish Composers with the financial support of the government of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The film was honored as an Official Contribution of the Festive Year 2021 – “1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany” under the patronage of the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The film features performances of compositions by Max Stern, Laurence Sherr, Hans Gál, Ernest Bloch, and Felix Mendelssohn.

Heather Witt

mezzo-soprano

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called mezzo-soprano Heather Witt “the kind of singer you hope to hear — talented, alert… a singer with a future.” Witt is known for her portrayal of a wide array of opera’s most notable mezzo-soprano characters, including: Carmen in Carmen, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Gertrude in Roméo et Juliette, Giulietta in Les contes d’Hoffmann (Festival of International Opera, Brazil), Dryad in Ariadne Auf Naxos, Principessa in Suor Angelica, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Second Lady and Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte, Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, Elmire in Tartuffe, Mauya in Riders to the Sea, Mrs. Nolan in The Medium, Mrs. Herring in Albert Herring, Meg in Falstaff, Sally in Hand of Bridge, and Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, among many others.

Witt performed in the debut of a fully staged production of Hans Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook (Songfest) where the L.A. Times called her performance “uniformly impressive.” In 2013, Witt made her South American debut with Festival of International Opera of the Americas in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Witt is also an esteemed oratorio and concert soloist having performed throughout the Southeast.

Witt completed her undergraduate studies in music at Millikin University and received a Master’s degree in Voice from Georgia State University.

John Warren

clarinet

John Warren is Professor of Clarinet and Coordinator of Woodwinds at Kennesaw State University. His previous university affiliations include Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah GA, and The University of Nebraska at Omaha. For 15 years, he was the principal clarinetist of the Savannah Symphony Orchestra and prior to that position, the principal clarinetist of the Omaha Symphony. He served as principal clarinetist of the Des Moines Metro Opera for many summers prior to arriving in Atlanta. At KSU, Warren teaches applied clarinet lessons, woodwind and mixed chamber music, and coordinates the activities of the woodwind area.

Warren is a member of the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and the IRIS Orchestra of Memphis TN as well as performing frequently and recording with the Atlanta Symphony. His playing can be heard on the Telarc, Naxos, Albany, and New World labels. He has performed as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the IRIS Orchestra, the Curtis Institute Orchestra, and the symphonies of Savannah, Omaha, Hilton Head, and Beaufort SC. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Warren has appeared at the Aspen Music Festival, the Evian Festival, and the Highlands Chamber Music Festival, and has performed in recitals in Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Luxembourg. He has been a featured recitalist at a number of conferences of the International Clarinet Association and has coordinated the ICA’s High School Solo Competition.

Warren serves as a performing artist for Yamaha, playing their CSVR line of instruments. He is also a performing artist with D’Addario, using their X-10E mouthpiece, and recently became associated as an endorsing artist with Légère, the world’s leading innovator in synthetic reeds.

Originally from Shreveport LA, Warren holds degrees from the University of Cincinnati College/Conservatory of Music and The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He counts among his most influential teachers Donald Montanaro, L. Thomas LeGrand, and Richard Waller.

Charae Krueger

cello

Charae Krueger is Principal Cellist for the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra. She is Senior Lecturer and Artist-in-Residence at Kennesaw State University, having been a faculty member since 2006. Krueger is an avid chamber musician and is a member of the Summit Piano Trio and the Serafin Ensemble. She is a regularly featured artist at the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina, the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, and at Serafin Summer Music. Her solo and chamber music recitals have been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, WABE Radio Atlanta, and WGBH Radio Boston. She plays frequently with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Charleston Symphony. Krueger also enjoys recording studio work and has played on albums of Bruce Springsteen, Faith Hill, and Natalie Cole as well as on Atlanta stadium shows with The Eagles, The Who, Hugh Jackman, and Rod Stewart.

Recent concerts include chamber music performances at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Grand Teton Music Festival with violinist Julian Rachlin, and Charleston’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival, with the Atlanta Chamber Players and Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta, and concerts with Cho-Liang Lin and concertmasters William Preucil, Andres Cardenes and David Coucheron at the Highland-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival. Krueger has been featured in solo recitals at the Blue Ridge Chamber Music Festival and All-Saints Church concert series in Atlanta, and concerto performances with DeKalb Symphony Orchestra and the Atlanta Community Orchestra. She has twice performed the entire Beethoven cycle of cello sonatas with pianist Robert Henry and has done a southeastern U.S. recital tour and accompanying live CD with pianist Stanley Yerlow.

Krueger received her early cello training in Canada at the Regina Conservatory of Music. She received her Bachelor of Music Performance degree from New England Conservatory in Boston and holds an Artist Diploma from the Longy School of Music in Cambridge MA. She continued her training at the Banff Centre in Canada and did quartet training with the Juilliard Quartet at the Juilliard School summer program. Krueger was also a participant in the New York String Orchestra Seminar under the direction of Alexander Schneider with concerts at Carnegie Hall. She was a founding member of the award-winning Arden String Quartet, with national and international appearances at Merkin Hall in New York City and Brown and Hofstra Universities as well as radio programs throughout the U.S. east coast.

Robert Henry

piano

Robert Henry is an internationally distinguished pianist, winning universal acclaim as orchestral soloist, recitalist, accompanist, and chamber musician. Gramophone Magazine noted that “Robert Henry’s lyricism hits the mark. Cogent shaping, dynamism, and power…inner voices decisively sing and project in his Chopin…bass lines reinforce this music’s often ignored backbone…rapturous and texturally refined playing…absolutely enchanting.” Other reviewers have hailed him as a “consummate artist — brilliant, formidable, effortless, and the epitome of control and poise.”

Career highlights include solo debut recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Wigmore Hall, with critics praising his “flawless technique, smooth and limpid phrasing, exciting programming.” He has presented concert tours of the United States, England, Nova Scotia, Russia, Italy, Czech Republic, and Poland. A renowned collaborator and chamber musician, he has appeared with such notable conductors as Robert Spano, Donald Runnicles, Michael Palmer, and Stefan Sanderling. In response to Hurricane Katrina, he coordinated and performed in the “Pianists for New Orleans” tour of the United States, raising over $100,000.

Henry has enjoyed phenomenal success competitively, ultimately winning the Gold Medal in four international piano competitions. On three occasions, juries have spontaneously created special prizes to honor his performances, including “Best Performance of a 20th-Century Work” and “Best Performance of a Commissioned Work.” In 2010, Henry released his debut recording, Twelve Nocturnes and a Waltz. The recording is a collection of some of the world’s best-loved melodies, including the world premiere of Alexei Stanchinsky’s forgotten 1907 Nocturne. Henry produced the world premiere recording of Brahms’ recently discovered Albumblatt, available now on iTunes as a single. This track is included in the album As the Songbird Sings: Music of Schubert and Brahms.

Henry earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland, with additional studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Glinka Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia. As an educator and pedagogue, he presents lectures, masterclasses, residencies, and youth concerts, and has been featured in American Music Teacher, Gramophone, and Clavier Magazine. He is Director of the GRAMMY award-winning Atlanta Boy Choir, Organist-Choirmaster of the St. George’s Episcopal Church in Griffin GA, and serves as Assistant Professor of Music and Coordinator of the Piano Area at Kennesaw State University. He is also a founding member of the Summit Piano Trio. An International Steinway Artist, he maintains his web-presence at www.roberthenry.org.

Henry is represented by Parker Artists, New York.

John Lawless

percussion

John Lawless has served as Principal Timpanist of the Atlanta Opera orchestra since 1979 and held the same position with the Chattanooga Symphony for 21 years. Since 1978, Lawless has performed, toured, and recorded with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra while maintaining a thriving freelance career as a studio and pit percussionist. As a soloist, Lawless played several concertos with the Chattanooga Symphony, including The Olympian for 8 Timpani and Orchestra and The Messenger for Multiple Percussion and Orchestra, both written by James Oliverio. In 2009, Lawless performed Joseph Schwantner’s Concerto for Percussion with the Cobb Symphony Orchestra. In 2014, he performed the southeastern premier of Christopher Theofinidis’ Marimba Concerto with the Kennesaw State University Wind Ensemble for the KSU Festival of New Music.

Lawless joined the music faculty of Kennesaw State University in 1998 and became the Director of Percussion Studies in 2004. A founding member of the Atlanta Percussion Trio, he performs hundreds of school concerts a year for thousands of children throughout the southeastern United States. Along with Scott Douglas and Karen Hunt, the trio has been a performing group for 32 years, bringing educational programs to children of all ages.

A graduate of Georgia State University, Lawless’ teachers include Tom Float, Jack Bell, Cloyd Duff, Paul Yancich, Bill Wilder, and Mark Yancich. Previous faculty appointments include those at Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta University, and West Georgia State University.

David Kehler

conductor

David Kehler, Director of Bands and Professor of Music at the Bobbie Bailey School of Music at Kennesaw State University, serves as Music Director and Conductor of the KSU Wind Ensemble. In addition, Kehler teaches courses in instrumental conducting, symphonic repertoire, and twentieth century music. Kehler is also the recipient of several awards including the Kennesaw State University College of Arts 2020 Teaching Award, and the 2021 Research and Creative Activity Award.

An advocate of new music, Kehler has commissioned more than two-dozen composers, including several Pulitzer Prize winners, to write new compositions for wind ensemble. Performing music beyond the KSU campus, the KSU Wind Ensemble can also be heard frequently on Atlanta Public Radio along with being featured at the College Band Directors National Association Southern Division Convention (two times), and at the 2016 Georgia Music Educators Association State Conference. In 2013, the KSU Wind Ensemble won the American Prize for best university wind ensemble/concert band recording in the United States.

In addition to his university responsibilities, Kehler serves as Music Director and Conductor of the Atlanta Wind Symphony. Recent performances under his leadership have included the 2020 Georgia Music Educators Association Conference in Athens GA, and at the 2021 Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago IL. Kehler also serves on the Board of Directors for the College Band Directors National Association and serves as the CBDNA Southern Division President.

Previously, Kehler served as Associate Conductor of The Dallas Winds: America’s Premiere Windband and served as Founder and Conductor of the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra Wind Symphony. Previous academic appointments were at Southern Methodist University, the University of Rhode Island, and Bay City Western High School, in Bay City MI. Growing up in Michigan, Kehler received his Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music in Conducting degrees from Michigan State University, followed by his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in instrumental conducting from the University of Texas at Austin.

Notes

The compositions on this album remember and honor not only the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, but also those of other tragedies. The earliest composition, Elegy and Vision, was written in memory of my youngest brother. Its programming in Holocaust remembrance concerts led me to delve further into the people and culture of my European Jewish ancestry, especially to seek more information about my mother’s immediate family and my parents’ other relatives who perished in the Holocaust. As commemoration, I began creating intentional Holocaust remembrance works by researching and utilizing source material from that time. The first of these works, Fugitive Footsteps, sets a Nelly Sachs poem evoking the plight of refugees. Another Sachs poem, mourning a lost love, appears in Flame Language. Inspiration for Sonata for Cello and Piano–Mir zaynen do! and Khayele’s Waltz stemmed from Holocaust source songs chosen to provide tribute to their creators. Spanning three decades, all these works are intended to engender remembrance, understanding, and tolerance, and to provide solace and healing.

The creation and singing of songs were important and widespread activities among persecuted groups during the Holocaust. The songs served a wide range of purposes; these included expressing inner feelings, encouraging resilience and resistance, establishing identity, strengthening faith and courage, lamenting loss and current circumstances, and longing for earlier and better times. My sonata includes four songs that originated in ghettos, concentration camps, or among the partisans. Mir zaynen do! (We Are Here!), the subtitle of my work, is a refrain in one of these songs: Zog nit keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg (Never Say You Are Walking the Last Road). Partisan poet Hirsh Glik penned this emblematic Yiddish phrase as the concluding refrain in Zog nit keynmol; it is a phrase that signified identity, resistance, and survival, and that has been used similarly in numerous titles and initiatives since then.

The sonata-form first movement uses the song Yid, du partizaner (Jew, You Partisan) as the first theme. Partisan activist Shmerke Kaczerginski wrote the emboldening Yiddish lyrics to an existing melody that he likely heard from other partisans. Kaczerginski was a tireless advocate whose collecting of Holocaust songs is most well-known through his post-war publication Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs from the Ghettos and Camps). Three of the songs in the sonata appear in this collection.

The second movement draws upon the work of two Jewish musicians–as in the other movements, these sources are integrated with newly composed material. The first source is Kel (El) mole rachamim, a Jewish prayer for the souls of the deceased as sung by Cantor Sholom Katz. Katz recounted that his life was spared when he sang this prayer just before a mass execution during the Holocaust. He continued singing the prayer after the war with newly added text that laments the murder of European Jews in extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka. The cello ‘intones’ transcribed excerpts from Katz’s singing as the movement unfolds. The second source is the comforting lullaby Wiegala that Czech poet and songwriter Ilse Weber created while a prisoner in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The lullaby gradually emerges near the end of the movement. 

Zog nit keynmol is the basis for the theme and eight variations in the third movement. Partisan poet Hirsh Glik used a film melody by Soviet-Jewish composers Dmitri and Daniel Pokrass to create this song after hearing about the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising and other Jewish resistance. Glik’s lyrics convey defiant hope in the face of adversity, and the song quickly spread across Yiddish-speaking Europe. The opening of the final variation features the piano continuing with Zog nit keynmol while the cello simultaneously plays the song Yugnt himn (Youth Hymn). Yugnt himn is a 1943 motivational song Kaczerginski created for a ghetto youth club by writing lyrics to music composed before the war. Both Kaczerginski and Glik were active partisans in Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania), and their songs used in the sonata show the remarkable resilience and resistance in Vilna, where only about 4–5% of the Jewish population survived the Holocaust.

Each of the creators of the songs used in the sonata has a compelling story. Their songs provide illumination of their lives and circumstances, allow us to gain perspective on lost and forbidden voices, and help us to understand the unprecedented tragedy of the Holocaust. By creating a new composition drawing on the work of these creators, it is my hope that performers and audiences will connect with their stories, and that the legacy of their cultural contributions will be strengthened and remembered.

******************

The cello sonata was written for an international consortium of cellists and became the centerpiece of my subsequently developed Music of Resistance and Survival Project, a concert combining the source songs, cello sonata, and a presentation about the source song creators, all supplemented by online educational materials. From the score: “Sonata for Cello and Piano–Mir zaynen do! is dedicated to my father, Saul Sherr (1925–2012). Born Szolem Szereszewski in the Polish shtetl of Szczuczyn, he was a Yiddish speaker whose love of cantorial singing and Jewish music influenced me in ways I am still coming to realize.”

— Laurence Sherr

Khayele’s Waltz starts and ends with the waltz melody that appears in the Yiddish song A mame (A Mother) by 15-year-old Khayele Poznanski of Vilna. While the origin of this melody is not known, Poznanski used it for the lamenting lyrics she created following her mother’s imprisonment in a camp during the Holocaust. Poznanski herself later perished in the Holocaust, but her song survived and appears in the post-war collection Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs from the Ghettos and Camps). This arrangement for clarinet and cello was prepared for a 2018 event featuring Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musicians.

— Laurence Sherr

Fugitive Footsteps is a tribute to Holocaust refugees and survivors. Jewish poet Nelly Sachs survived by fleeing from Germany to Sweden in 1940, and she spent the following phase of her career bearing witness to the Holocaust through her writing. She was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work. I chose her poem “World, do not ask those snatched from death” because it reflects the experiences of Holocaust survivors like Sachs and my mother, both of whom fled Germany and survived the war as refugees in neutral European countries. Also significant in my choice of the poem is the universality of its meaning and message, both of which address the plights of survivors of all tragedies. My hope is that my setting of Sachs’s words will promote healing, awareness, and understanding.

Fugitive Footsteps is dedicated to my mother, Alice Bacharach Sherr. Born in Egelsbach, Germany in 1931, she was sent via Kindertransport to a children’s home in Switzerland in 1939. She was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.

— Laurence Sherr

This work was created for the German-American duo of Friedrich Edelmann and Rebecca Rust. They premiered it at a 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day event at the Holocaust Museum LA in Los Angeles CA. The recording is a live performance made for their video Musiken Jüdischer Komponisten.

— Laurence Sherr

German poet Nelly Sachs, winner of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, narrowly escaped with her mother to the neutral country of Sweden in 1940. Surviving the war in poverty in their one-room Stockholm apartment, Sachs wrote about the tragedy of the Jewish people in words that were also universal, symbolic of the suffering and redemption of all humanity. She was particularly distressed to learn that the man she had loved for more than 30 years had died in a concentration camp in 1943, and penned a cycle of ten poems, “Gebete für den toten Bräutigam” (Prayers for a Dead Bridegroom). These appeared in the collection In den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Dwellings of Death), published in 1946.

The first poem in the cycle is the one I selected, and I decided that it was important to have English-speaking audiences understand the poetry as it was being sung. With the goal of creating an English translation whose meaning was as close as possible to the original, I enlisted the aid of my faculty colleague Dr. Sabine Smith. Her German-language expertise led to this new English version. The imagery of Sachs’s opening lines is what initially caught my attention: Jews customarily mark the mourning following the death of a loved one with a seven-day candle, and each anniversary of the death thereafter with a 24-hour candle (a yahrzeit memorial candle). Yet the trembling, quaking flame could also represent a force both illuminating and destructive. Appearing widely in Sachs’s work are one or more of the four elements of ancient Greek philosophy–earth, water, fire, and air. Along with the word “elements,” they all appear here (dust as a metaphor for earth). Other of Sachs’s influences stem from her reading of Jewish and Christian mysticism and literature, including Kabbalah and the Zohar.

— Laurence Sherr

Elegy and Vision was written in memory of my brother Edwin Neal Sherr, who died at the age of 24. Edwin was named for my mother’s sister Edith, who perished at Auschwitz. As implied by the title, the composition is meant to commemorate Edwin’s life as well as to convey a sense of resolution and hope. The work, jointly commissioned by The [Jimmy] Carter Center of Emory University and cellist Ian Ginsburg, is in three sections. The Lamentoso first section is followed by increasing intensity and motion in the Un poco mosso of the second section. The last section is marked Calmly, and then, at the very end, Serenely, the latter meant to evoke a lifting of the spirit.

— Laurence Sherr

Laurence Sherr is grateful for all the public, private, individual, and corporate support for his work on music related to the Holocaust. He would especially like to thank SNCF America, Inc. and Kennesaw State University.

Texts

Fugitive Footsteps

World, do not ask those snatched from death
Nelly Sachs

World, do not ask those snatched from death
where they are going,
they are always going to their graves.
The pavements of the foreign city
were not laid for the music of fugitive footsteps—
The windows of the houses that reflect a lifetime
of shifting tables heaped with gifts from a picture-book
heaven–
were not cut for eyes
which drank terror at its source.
World, a strong iron has cauterized the wrinkle of their
smile;
they would like to come to you
because of your beauty,
but for the homeless all ways wither
like cut flowers—

But we have found a friend
in exile: the evening sun.
Blessed by its suffering light
we are bidden to come to it with our sorrow
which walks beside us:
A psalm of night.

“World, do not ask” from O THE CHIMNEYS by Nelly Sachs, translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead.
Translation copyright © 1970 and translation copyright renewed © 1998 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
Used by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.

Flame Language

The candle that I have lit for you
Nelly Sachs

The candle that I have lit for you
Speaks quakes with the air of flame language,
And water drops from the eye; from the grave
Your dust distinctly calls to life eternal.

Oh exalted meeting place in poverty’s room.
If I only knew, what the elements mean;
They strive to understand you, for everything points always
To you; I can do nothing but cry.

© Copyright by Suhrkamp Verlag. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Suhrkamp Verlag.
English translation by Drs. Sabine Smith and Laurence Sherr.

News

July 17, 2023

PARMA Artists Selected as 2023 Global Music Award Winners

April 10, 2023

The Inside Story: Laurence Sherr and FUGITIVE FOOTSTEPS: REMEMBRANCE MUSIC

Videos

Fugitive Footsteps album preview from Laurence Sherr