Rather short notice I’m afraid but McGill’s Schulich Singers and others have a Holocaust remembrance concert on Monday night (November 4th) at Trinity St. Paul’s at 7.30pm featuring Ittai Shapira’s The Ethics in the original choral version. The same programme will be presented in Ottawa on the 10th and Montreal on the 12th.

The full programme is:

• Ittai Shapira The Ethics (2015), for violin, piano, percussion, and chorus. With guest artists Israeli-American violinist/composer Ittai Shapira, and German pianist Constanze Beckmann.
• Michael Spiroff Panikhida: Vechnaya Pamyat (Requiem: Memory Eternal) (Premiere)
• Other selected works, with readings from the magazine VEDEM, by the boys of the Republic of Škid, and the memoires of the late George Brady, a survivor of Terezín.

The Ethics, for Violin, Piano, Percussion, and Chorus, was written as a modern day response to the Holocaust, and inspired by Ela Weisberger in memory of Eva Sachs and the children of Theresienstadt. Ela Weisberger played the role of the cat in Brundibar, the children’s opera by Hans Krása, which was performed in the camp.

Composer Ittai Shapira explains his work thus:

In interviewing some of the survivors, my main goal with the piece was an exploration of the history, what would have happened with the children that did not survive, and what my own life could have been had I been in the camp. Thus, the piece starts and ends with a Spinoza Quote: “If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past”.