Celebrating the Arts on Facebook

We’ve always embraced artistic endeavors and have many clients and friends in the arts. Recently we started a ‘celebrate the arts’ feature on our Facebook page. Each Friday, as we wind down our work week and look forward to some recreation, we celebrate the creativity and hard work of an individual or group involved in the arts. This week we’re focusing on our friend and client, “Best of NH” composer, Lawrence Siegel.

Larry is currently in Houston preparing for a major concert: on November 23rd the Houston Symphony and Houston Symphony Chorus will perform a full symphonic version of “Kaddish”, Larry’s oratorio which draws on the actual words of Holocaust survivors. “My intention in writing it is to make common cause with those who survived the Holocaust. I want the audience to feel some shadow of what the survivors felt and feel. I want us to carry in our hearts, and, metaphorically, on our backs, those who perished.” says Larry. The work is powerfully direct, never more so than in the resilient, defiant, and joyful closing movement, “So Here I Am”.

Of the process, Larry says “The libretto for Kaddish is fashioned largely from testimonies of survivors; primarily first-hand interviews which I conducted over several years. Because of the verbatim use of testimony, the messages are an authentic and accurate reading of the feelings and thoughts of some of the survivors of the Holocaust.”

The same process is also used in his “Verbatim” Projects (participatory encounters in which a group or community creates and performs an original work of music theatre about their own lives and experiences) and in a series of pieces he’s currently working on, under the collective title “Fellow Citizens”.

We encourage those who can to attend the concert in Houston (Nov. 23rd at Houston Symphony, Jones Hall), or performances also taking place next month in Florida (Nov. 6th at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton) and New Hampshire (Nov. 14th at University of New Hampshire, Durham). If you can’t make it to any of the performances we hope you can at least learn a little more about Larry’s non-profit organization Tricinium, the Kaddish Project, and if you’re on Facebook you can ‘like’ Tricinium and the new CD release of Kaddish.