Jewish Music Institute: The Open Fund for Organisations

Event date:

Spring - Autumn 2014

Event venue:

Various

‘I never saw another butterfly’ is a new cross-disciplinary musical composition and performance commissioned by the Jewish Music Institute. The work, created by Jocelyn Pook, is inspired by the drawings and poems of the child-inmates of Terezin concentration camp during the Second World War.

The work will be premiered in 2014 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the commencement of the liquidation of Terezin, when many were deported to Auschwitz as part of Hitler’s Final Solution. Pook’s composition will be a powerful, poignant piece that brings to life the experiences of children under the Nazis for today’s audience. She will work closely with dramaturge Emma Bernhard(Streetwise Opera) to create a staged musical piece which will include symbolic dramatic elements and feature a child actor-singer as well as three soloists – Melanie Pappenheim, Lori Lixenberg and Lorin Sklamberg (Klezmatics) – and aband of virtuoso klezmer and classical musicians including Sophie Solomon on violin, Ian Watson on accordion and Susi Evans of She’koyokh on clarinet. It will also use fragmentary sound samples such as recorded interviews from camp survivors and projected video created by visual artist Dragan Aleksic combining children’s drawings juxtaposed with archive photographs and Nazi propaganda films made inside the camp.

Children’s Workshops for 6-10 and 11-15 year olds are integral to the project enabling participants to discover the story of Terezin, listen to Pook’s new composition, learn to sing a song from the work and create their own new poems, drawings or songs inspired by the experience.

Winner of the David Bedford Music Education Award.