TEREZÍN MUSIC FOUNDATION 2022 GALA
  • ABOUT
    • Photos: The Dinner
    • Photos: The Concert
    • The work you support >
      • Support TMF
      • Contact us
      • 2021 Gala Highlights
      • 202 Gala Highlights
    • Benefit Committee
  • Program
  • Artists & Honorees
    • Jonathan Biss
    • Jeremiah Klarman >
      • About Klarman's Piece
    • Coro Allegro, David Hodgkins Director
    • The Arneis Quartet
    • Viktor Ullmann
    • Honoring Ed Markey and Susan Blumenthal
  • PRESS
  • TICKETS

10.16.22 GALA • with pianist Jonathan Biss

Join us!

"Sketch for Terezín/Does Grace" by Jeremiah Klarman

This TMF commission is dedicated to 2021 Terezín Legacy Award recipient Rochelle Walensky, in honor of her healing work as director of the CDC. It is a setting of two TMF-commissioned poems anthologized in our book Liberation; the poems appear below.

PicturePhoto by Fred Viebahn
RITA DOVE has served as U.S. Poet Laureate and Poet laureate of Virginia. Among her many awards are the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Heinz Award in the arts and humanities, the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton and the National Medal of the Arts from President Barak Obama. 

SKETCH FOR TEREZÍN
by Rita Dove

breathe in     breathe out
that's the way

in       out
left     right

where did we leave from?
when do we stop leaving?

     *
     This far west, summer nights cool off
     but stay light, blue-stung,
     long after sleep lowers its merciful hammer.


     *

breathe     left
breathe     right

one     two
in        out

     *

     There will be music and ice cream
     and porcelain sinks.
     carts of bread for the looking;
     choirs and gymnastics.

     I get to carry the banner.


     *

that's the way keep it up
in out     in out

where did we leave from
when did we stop leaving

     *
     I was a girl when I arrived,
     carrying two pots
     from my mother's kitchen.
     It was October, growing crisp,
     my sweater soft as cream cakes,
     my braid blonder than the star
     stitched across my heart.


     *

breathe     breathe
that's the way

left right left
right left right

     *

     no one asks what village I am from
     though I look out from its leaf-green eyes

     no one asks if I remember how the butterflies
     startled, churning up lemony clouds

     no one else nears the river chafing its banks
     the one road singing its promises
     going out


     *

when did we leave from
when did we stop leaving

     *

     if I am to become a heavenly body
     I would like to be a comet
     a streak of spitfire consuming itself
     before a child's upturned wonder

PicturePhoto by Noa Brezner.
ALMOG BEHAR is an Israeli poet, fiction writer, and essayist, a political-language activist of Mizrahi descent who writes in Hebrew and Arabic. He has won the Bernstein Prize, the Haaretz competition and the Prime Minister's Prize. His most recent book is Poems for Prisoners.

DOES GRACE
by Almog Behar 
Translated from the Hebrew by the author.

The prayers of the fathers
In the buildings of stone
And in the public gardens of graves:
The soil was caressed until mourning
And the skies until tears.
Now the cantor will call
Now it is turn for the skies
To crack naked in open wonder:
If nature does not have a partner in the ceremony
It remains lost in confusion.
Only onto God no one bestows grace
And no one listens to his prayers:
People shout in the public squares
How lonesome they are
But how lonely is God no one can tell.
Again the prayer goes back to the page
Like the dove before becoming a metaphor:
Routine is yet to be invented
The dove still has a chance.

Our 2021 Gala Concert Event is generously sponsored by:
Picture
Picture
Picture
TEREZÍN MUSIC FOUNDATION • concerts • commissions • recordings • publications • Holocaust and genocide education around the world. Mark Ludwig, Executive Director
www.terezinmusic.org  •  info@terezinmusic.org   •   Info & 
Donations: 857-222-8263 or here.
P.O. Box 230206, Boston, Massachusetts 02123
​HONORING THE LEGACY • INSPIRING NEW VOICES
  • ABOUT
    • Photos: The Dinner
    • Photos: The Concert
    • The work you support >
      • Support TMF
      • Contact us
      • 2021 Gala Highlights
      • 202 Gala Highlights
    • Benefit Committee
  • Program
  • Artists & Honorees
    • Jonathan Biss
    • Jeremiah Klarman >
      • About Klarman's Piece
    • Coro Allegro, David Hodgkins Director
    • The Arneis Quartet
    • Viktor Ullmann
    • Honoring Ed Markey and Susan Blumenthal
  • PRESS
  • TICKETS