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LA Jewish Symphony celebrates 30 years

Los Angeles Jewish Symphony Artistic Director Dr. Noreen Green joins us to talk about their 30th Anniversary concert happening on April 14, 2024.

KCAL News

1 day ago

doesn't that just sound incredible the Los Angeles Jewish symphony is celebrating 30 years and they've got a special night of music coming up on April 14th featuring the Symphony of the Holocaust joining me now is Dr noring Green artistic director and conductor of the LA Jewish Symphony thank you so much for joining me and congratulations on 30 Years thank you so much and it's a pleasure to be here you are the founder of the LA Jewish Symphony let's talk about 30 years you guys will be performin
g in the same location you did 30 years ago what is that significance for you well when we were planning our 30-y year anniversary we talked about where would be the ideal place to have it and it seemed like the natural thing to do was to go back to our debut venue especially since the venue now is being uh taken over by another Temple so wilsh Boulevard Temple bought University synagogue it's the same Sanctuary but they've remodeled it so we're like the very first um big concert that they're ha
ving in there since the sanctuary has been remodeled and it'll be wonderful to be back in that space it's a gorgeous space and what they've done to it has really uh improved it and uh we're very happy to be there incredible to go back at 30 years later because so much has changed but one of the featured works in the performance is Symphony of Holocaust we know this was composed by Holocaust Survivor tell me about how the work came about the story behind it it's so interesting thank you yes uh so
Symphony of the Holocaust was composed by Shaunie Alex Brun and he survived four death camps and he survived because of music because of playing the violin and um this Symphony represents the music that was in his head that helped him survive the horrific thing that his body was going through he had to somehow emotionally and mentally get through what was happening and he was only 14 years old when he was intered into the first death camp his um his lifetime goal was to have the Symphony of the
Holocaust performed in front of the gates of of oshit and uh we actually created a documentary I was part of a documentary that brought it back but the actual symphony is in five mve five movements and it kind of goes through his life what it was like to be intered and all of a sudden found out what was happening to him and then a prayer asking for forgiveness uh for God for helping them get through it and and anything they could do and then The Liberation you hear Liberation the armies come an
d save them and then there's a song of commemoration which is a very sad song because you realized that I survived he survived but not any of his family or friends and then the decision to live life and the last movement is the joy of life and it has Kar influence and and roma influence the Gypsy songs that he was that influenced his composition as well as his classical training incredible that he composed this music but what also in emotional experience this takes you through and in educational
experience for those who aren't Jewish what are you hoping that they take away from something like this because I don't think you have to be Jewish to attend or no absolutely not in fact feel the emotion right the the mission of the symphony is to build Bridges through music and using uh Jewish music as the link to other communities Jews have been around for 5,000 years and we've lived in all parts of the world and we take the music of whatever country we have lived in and and make it part of o
ur tradition so um there's ashkani Jews which are Eastern European and and this uh kmer piece this Symphony of the Holocaust has more of the Eastern European field but there's also spartic music and we have a large education program called Patchwork of cultures where we use spartic Music which is comes from Spain as a bridge between the Latino Community here in Los Angeles and the Jewish community and we've serviced um over 20,000 kids over the years uh using music as a bridge and um it's very i
mportant as part of our mission to educate and every concert is an education I I talk about the music before I present it so that people understand objectively why it fits into the theme of the concert and also subjectively why it resonates with me Dr Green thank you so much for joining us it sounds incredible and the emotional experience one can get from music and the connection they can get from music is absolutely incredible of course if you would like to see the 30th Anniversary Concert on A
pril 14th you can find more information about the LA Jewish Symphony by going to KCAL news.com and clicking on on TV

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