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Somebody's Favorite - I Follow The Light (Soundcloud Preview)

Somebody's Favorite - Stay The Night (Soundcloud Preview)

Somebody's Favorite - Midnight Sun (Soundcloud Preview)

This piece is based on a poem by Gertrud Kolmar, a German-Jewish writer who died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. There is so much joy and beauty in Gertrud Kolmar’s poetry, but this poem about her love for her people and her anguish over their impending doom just seemed like it needed to be sung. I tried to show how powerful her voice is, how she had the courage to embrace her Jewish identity even as Europe’s Jews were being targeted for destruction.

"Wir Juden" was premiered by LA Master Chorale in April 2017. USC Chamber Singers read and recorded it in May 2017.

Text adapted from Gertrud Kolmar's "Wir Juden":

Nur Nacht hört zu. Ich liebe dich, ich liebe dich, mein Volk,
Und will dich ganz mit Armen umschlingen heiss und fest, 
So wie ein Weib den Gatten, der am Pranger steht, am Kolk, 
Die Mutter den geschmähten Sohn nicht einsam sinken lässt.
Wenn deine zitternden Arme nun grausam eingeschnürt,
So lass mich Ruf, der in den Schacht der Ewigkeiten fällt,
Die Hand mich sein, die aufgereckt an Gottes hohen Himmel rührt.
O könnt’ ich wie lodernde Fackel in die finstere Wüste der Welt 
Meine Stimme heben: Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit!
Ich fühle die Faust, die das weinende Haupt auf den Aschenhügel mir zerrt.

English translation by Schocken Verlag (1947):

Only the night listens. I love you, I love you, my people, 
And want to hold you warm and close in my arms
As a woman embraces her husband bound to the whipping post,
As a mother at the pondside won’t let her reviled son sink all alone.
If your trembling arms are now cruelly bound,
Let mine be the cry that plummets into the pit of eternity, Mine the hand that stretches up to touch God’s high heaven.
Oh, if I could lift my voice like a flaring torch in the dark waste of the world 
Lift my voice: Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!
I feel the fist that drags my weeping head to the ash heap.

Wir Juden - USC Chamber Singers

Lover, Stay With Me (Cover)

Selwyn Choir sings 'He made the stars also' an introit by Sarah MacDonald.

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Kate Crellin

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