For Our Fathers
An unforgettable evening of song and art.
Two fathers—one an Austrian, one a French Jew—and a legacy of silence that their daughters turned into art.
Austrian soprano Ute Gfrerer and Boston-area visual artist Lisa Rosowsky present an unforgettable evening of song and art in honor of their fathers, who lived through two very different experiences of World War II in Europe.
Gfrerer’s father was a member of the Nazi Youth Party and a soldier, while Rosowsky’s father went into hiding in France after his parents were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Both daughters were left with a legacy of silence and grief, which they transformed into art and
music.
Join them for a moving program of Holocaust-related songs—poems set to music by composers such as Kurt Weill, Norbert Glanzberg, and Hermann Leopoldi—matched with artwork that explores family history and memory.
Austrian soprano Ute Gfrerer is widely considered to be one of the best interpreters of Kurt Weill’s music. She has performed and recorded many of his works, including The Threepenny Opera, One Touch of Venus, Lady in the Dark, Marie Galante, and The Seven Deadly Sins. Her career has brought her to major musical centers around the world, including Barbican Hall in London, the Cologne Philharmonie, NHK Hall in Tokyo, Teatro National in Guatemala City, Vienna Volksoper, and the Zurich Opera. Not only is Gfrerer a regular guest artist at the Kurt Weill Festival in Germany, she has also performed at the renowned Salzburg Festival in Austria, the Ellingwood Chapel in Nahant, and the Festival for Forbidden Music in Marseilles, France, where she discovered the Holocaust songs of Norbert Glanzberg heard in this program.
Born in the Boston area, Lisa Rosowsky is a graphic designer and a mixed-media artist who works most often with fabric. She has an AB from Harvard College and an MFA from Yale University. She is on the faculty at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she teaches graphic design, typography, and book design. She has had exhibitions at the Holocaust Museum of Houston, Brandeis University, and Hebrew College in New York. Her artists books are in the collections of the Boston Public Library, Wellesley College, University of Vermont, Stanford University, Harvard University, and the Museum of Printing. When she is not teaching or writing, Lisa can be found working in her studio.
Accompanist Tanya Blaich is widely respected as a pianist and teacher with particular sensitivity and expertise in the song and collaborative piano repertoire. A faculty member of New England Conservatory's collaborative piano and voice departments, Blaich is currently co-coordinator of the Liederabend Series at NEC and directed the Undergraduate Opera Studio from 2006 to 2009. Blaich has also served as a coach and rehearsal pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society.