Liederabend LXXI: This is the place - Voices of Exile and Exodus

This is the place: Voices of Exile and Exodus

 By mid-2022 waves of political violence and climate catastrophes forcibly displaced more than 100 million people—the largest number in recorded history. -- The New York Times 

 The current unfolding crisis in the Ukraine is only one of many violent upheavals throwing communities into dislocation in our own times. Syria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, the Gaza Strip, are all too-familiar reminders of homelands destroyed, residents turned into refugees:  These are the places you would rather not know about.  

This Liederabend explores displacement through the voices of travelers, immigrants and refugees across the ages: the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, an expat in Paris, a Romantic wanderer, a Jewish person fleeing Nazi Germany, an African-American estranged in his own country, a Chinese immigrant feeling homesick, a Japanese-Canadian forced into an internment camp. Where can I find shelter? is a question posed by every text on tonight’s program, texts of rupture and transformation which cut across lines of culture, race, and history.

Tonight's program was curated and coached by Tanya Blaich with additional coaching by Cameron Stowe.
 

The Liederabend—literally, "evening of song"—dates back to the 1800s, when musicians and lovers of music would gather at someone's home, and one or more singers and a pianist would perform the songs of composers of the day. In the field of classical music, these songs are referred to as "art songs," and the German art songs are called "Lieder." In Germany, the great age of song came in the 19th century. German and Austrian composers had written music for voice with keyboard before this time, but it was with the flowering of German literature in the Classical and Romantic eras that composers found high inspiration in great poetry, sparking the genre known as the "Lied."

The tradition of the art song composition continues today, with composers from all corners of the world setting poetry in many languages, scored for voice and piano. The NEC Liederabend series presents songs in a variety of languages—not only German—dating from the 19th century up to the present day.
 

This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live