Listening to Exile

Four Days of Concerts and talks

Freedom of the arts is essential for any democracy, but what role do the arts play when democracies come under pressure? Through four concerts and talks in New York City, the program will indulge in the works and stories of composers who went into exile, sharing their music, and asking how democracies and the arts relate today.

In cooperation with the Manhattan School of Music. This festival is generously supported by the Friends of Freiburg University, New York.

Program

Please register for each event individually

April 16, 2024, 6:30 PM
OPENING TALK & RECEPTION: OPERA IN EXILE
Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003

Welcome & Keynote: “Opera and Democracy” by Kai Hinrich Müller followed by a conversation about the past and present of being forced out of a country or a home and the struggles to continue artistic practices elsewhere.

• Brigid Cohen, Associate Professor of Music at New York University. She has taught and published on the politics of 20th-century avant-gardes, archive studies, diaspora and cosmopolitanism theory, 20th-century German-Jewish thought, histories of genocide, and intersections of music, literature, and the visual arts. Her second monograph, “Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes,” was published with University of Chicago Press in April, 2022.

• Gracie Golden is Artistic Freedom Initiative’s Senior Officer for Strategic Initiatives & Relocation, providing resettlement support across programs. She has dedicated her career to the intersection of art, cultural heritage, and human rights. Led by immigration and human rights attorneys, Artistic Freedom Initiative facilitates pro bono immigration representation and resettlement assistance for international artists at risk.

• Michael P. Steinberg, Brown University, Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History and Music, Professor of German Studies, author of “The Afterlife of Moses: Exile, Democracy, Renewal“

April, 17 2024, 7:30 PM
CONCERT I: Songs from Exile with works by Rosy Geiger-Kullmann, Paul Aron, and Ernst Toch
Center for Jewish History, Leo Baeck Institute New York, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011

• Rosy Geiger-Kullmann: Excerpts from Ritter Lanzelot, Emanuela and Columbus (World Premiere)

• Paul Aron: Zwei Lieder nach Gedichten von Christian Morgenstern, No 1. Es ist Nacht, January 26, 1950; In Memoriam … Three Songs (William Butler Yeats), No. 2. To Judd. Had I the Heaven’s, August 24, 1947; Vier Herbstlieder (Herman Hesse), No. 1. Der stille Hain, August 10, 1937, revised: July 29, 1947, No. 4. Ich habe nichts mehr zu sagen, August 7, 1947 (World Premiere)

• Ernst Toch (arr. Paul Aron): Edgar & Emily

• Moderation: Kai Hinrich Müller (Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles)

• Musicians: Manhattan School of Music

The concert introduces two German-Jewish composers in American exile: Paul Aron and Rosy Geiger-Kullmann. Aron, a protagonist of the German interwar avant-garde, founded an opera company in New York in the 1950s to popularize the works of émigrés such as Darius Milhaud, Kurt Weill, Tadeusz Kassern, and Ernst Toch through piano arrangements and English translations. One of these - his English version of Toch’s short opera Egon & Emilie - will be presented alongside exile songs by Aron. Geiger-Kullmann, a successful opera composer of the Weimar Republic, was born in Frankfurt and fled from the Nazis to New York and later to Monterey. Excerpts from her opera Columbus, written after her arrival in New York, and two stage works from her years in Germany have been reconstructed and will be performed in excerpts – a world premiere.

April 18, 2024, 6:30 PM
CONCERT II: Songs from Exile with works by Ruth Schonthal and Erich Zeisl
Austrian Cultural Forum New York, 11 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10022

• Ruth Schonthal: Princess Maleen (Excerpts)

• Erich Zeisl: Hiob (Excerpts)

• Musicians: Manhattan School of Music

• Introduction: Kai Hinrich Müller (Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles)

Ruth Schonthal and Erich Zeisl will be presented in a concert at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York: Schonthal, who would have celebrated her 100th birthday in 2024, became an important figure in the New York music scene. She composed several operas, including Princess Maleen, which will be heard in part. Zeisl, on the other hand, lived mainly on the West Coast, where he worked for the film and various educational institutions. Excerpts from his opera fragment Hiob, based on the famous novel by Joseph Roth, will be performed next to Schonthal. Both works are largely unknown today, as are the biographies of their authors.

April 20, 2024, 3:00 PM (doors open 2:30 PM)
DANCE AND FINNISSAGE
1014 - space for ideas, 1014 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

• Dance by New Chamber Ballet, Choreography by Miro Magloire, performed by Anabel Alpert, Megan Foley, Nicole McGinnis, Amber Neff, Rachele Perla, Kayla Schmitt.

• Music composed by Ursula Mamlok, Tania León, and Alyssa Regent, performed by Ellie Pope, soprano; Rea Abel, flute; Clara Cho, cello.

• Conversation moderated by Carl Christian Bettendorf

This concert and dance performance by Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet takes a leap from mid-century composers into the present. The performance starts with two dances set to music by Ursula Mamlok, who fled Germany for Ecuador in 1939 and then moved on to study in New York City in 1940. Once in the US, she became one of her generation's most renowned composers and wrote music in various genres and styles. After a conversation about the role and personal meaning of migration for their arts with German-born choreographer Miro Magloire and composer Alyssa Regent, who hails from Guadeloupe, the performance continues with music of one of Ursula Mamloks students: Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León was born in Cuba and left in 1967 for New York. The afternoon concludes with a World Premiere ballet set to music by Alyssa Regent.

Artists

Music by:
Ellie Pope, soprano
Benjamin Warschawski, tenor
Benjamin Sokol, baritone
Elliot Roman, piano
Rea Abel, flute
Clara Cho, cello

Dancers:
Anabel Alpert
Megan Foley
Nicole McGinnis
Amber Neff
Rachele Perla
Kayla Schmitt

Thanks to Reiko Füting and the Manhattan School of Music for making the concerts possible, and to New Chamber Ballet for their performance at 1014.

Biographies

Carl Christian Bettendorf
Carl Christian Bettendorf is a New York-based composer/conductor. Born in Germany, his teachers included Wolfgang Rihm and Tristan Murail, and he holds a doctorate from Columbia University. Currently, he serves on the composition faculty of Rowan University (NJ). He has received numerous awards, among them residencies in Paris, Bamberg (Germany), and at MacDowell as well as Fromm Foundation and Kaminsky Fund commissions. As a conductor, Mr. Bettendorf has worked with new-music ensembles in New York and abroad and was director of the Manhattanville and Bates College orchestras. His opera credits include Bard College and the Opéra national de Montpellier (France).

Brigid Cohen
Brigid Cohen is a historical musicologist who specializes in the historiography of musics and musicians in migration. Her research and teaching examine the mass dislocation of peoples over the last two centuries, addressing conditions of empire, globalization, genocide, exile, and minoritized citizenship. This intellectual program stems from her conviction that music assumes special value under the pressure of conditions of uprooting. Music serves as a mode of self-fashioning, secures new (and old) community bonds, and brings individuals together in listening, speech, and action. It also interacts in variegated ways with the silences that emerge from troubled sites of memory. 

Gracie Golden
Gracie Golden serves as Artistic Freedom Initiative’s Senior Officer of Strategic Initiatives & Relocation, providing resettlement support across programs. She has dedicated her career to the intersection of art, cultural heritage, and human rights. Ms. Golden has six years’ experience coordinating initiatives for the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center, and has contributed to research and curatorial projects at the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative. Prior to joining AFI, Ms. Golden received an MA in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a BA in anthropology and the history of art from Johns Hopkins University.

Tanja León (tbc)
Tania León (b. Havana, Cuba) is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2022, she was named a recipient of the 45th Annual Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements. In 2023, she was awarded the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University. Most recently, León became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s next Composer-in-Residence—a post she will hold for two seasons, beginning in September 2023. She will also hold Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for its 2023-2024 season.

Miro Magloire
Lauded as “refreshingly original” by Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times, choreographer Miro Magloire is the founder and artistic director of New Chamber Ballet. Magloire has created over one hundred ballets in his signature style for his company, all distinguished by sweeping elegance, a striking theatricality, and bold musical choices. “It's heartening to see work so focused on the meeting of dance and music,” Macaulay wrote in his Times review, “always you're aware of an intelligence at work that resists romantic cliché.” Known for his visionary collaborations with musicians - singers, violinists, pianists and large ensembles - Magloire has a special affinity for cutting-edge contemporary music, which has led him to work with many of today's leading composers.

Kai Hinrich Müller
Born 1985 in Stuttgart, Kai is one of the emerging festival makers at the intersection of scholarship and practice. His work fosters cultural dialogues across continents and connects him with renowned institutions in Europe and the United States. He is the director of the BAUHAUS MUSIC FESTIVAL in Berlin and the TEREZÍN MUSIC ACADEMY in the former ghetto of Theresienstadt, an initiative of MUSICA NON GRATA, for which he has curated numerous programs on artists persecuted by the Nazis. He has held several fellowships in Germany and the US, most recently at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles, where he initiated the transatlantic festival series OPERA & DEMOCRACY. Kai studied musicology, law and business administration (PhD 2013; habilitation 2022) and teaches at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. His current research interests include Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Circle, antisemitism in music history, musical life in the interwar and Nazi years, the ensuing period of exile in North America, as well as transatlantic opera traditions.

Alyssa Regent
Born in 1995, Alyssa is a New York-based composer originally from the islands of Guadeloupe. She has participated in several music festivals and programs such as the 77th Composer’s Conference, String Quartet Evolution at the Banff Center (Canada), New Music on the Point and the Lucerne Music Festival (Switzerland). In 2023, she was awarded the Ascap Morton Gould Young Composer Award. She studied composition with Suzanne Farrin, David Fulmer, Marcos Balter and George Lewis and is currently pursuing a DMA at Columbia University. She is inspired by what she calls “the unseen”, seeking to evoke passions and sensations that are deeply rooted in introspection. She harvests from the ethereal, the enigmatic intersections between music and spirituality. She loves to think about music as an exploration of the spiritual and emotional dimensions of the human experience. 

Michael P. Steinberg
Michael P. Steinberg is the Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History, and Professor of Music and German Studies at Brown University. From 2016 to 2018 he served as president of the American Academy in Berlin. At Brown he served as the founding director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities (2005-2015) and as Vice Provost for the Arts (2015-16). His books include The Trouble with Wagner (Chicago, 2018) as well as the edited volume Makers of Jewish Modernity (Princeton, 2016; winner of the National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction); Listening to Reason: Culture, Music, and Subjectivity in 19th-Century Music (Princeton, 2004), and The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival (Cornell, 2000), of which the German edition (Ursprung und Ideologie der Salzburger Festspiele; Anton Pustet Verlag, 2000) won Austria's Victor Adler Staatspreis in 2001.

Support the program

To further support the program and its wonderful musicians, please reach out to Katja Wiesbrock Donovan, Executive Director of 1014. All donations are tax-decutible.

Hosts

Opera and Democracy: Listening to Exile is a festival co-hosted by

Initiated by Thomas Mann House and curated by Thomas Mann Fellow Kai Hinrich Müller. This festival is generously supported by the Friends of Freiburg University, New York.