Zach Coates, Baritone and Allan Armstrong, Piano

PRESENTS

ZACH COATES, BARITONE & ALLAN ARMSTRONG, PIANO

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 7 PM

TSC PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, BROWNSVILLE

PROGRAM

“Shema Yisrael”: Art Songs by Jewish Composers

W h a t W e D i d N o t K n o w ( 2 0 1 4 ) S c o t t G e n d e l ( b 1 9 7 7 )

A F e a t h e r i n T i m e s S q u a r e

A s Y o u L e a v e t h e T r a i n

C n i d a r i a n

W h a t W e D i d N o t K n o w

S t a r l i g h t a t C a n a a n

T e r e z í n G h e t t o R e q u i e m ( 1 9 9 7 ) S y l v i e B o d o r o v á ( b 1 9 5 4 )

L a c r y m o s a ( t r a n s A l l a n A r m s t r o n g )

D i e s i r a e

L i b e r a m e

Č t y ř i p í s n ě n a s l o v a Č í n s k é p o e z i e ( 1 9 4 4 ) P a v e l H a a s ( 1 8 9 9 - 1 9 4 4 )

Z a s l e c h j s e m d i v o k é h u s y

V b a m b u s o v é m h á j i

D a l e k o m ě s í c j e d o m o v a

P r o b d ě n á n o c

D i e H e i m k e h r ( 1 9 4 4 ) H a n n s E i s l e r ( 1 8 9 8 - 1 9 6 2 )

D i e l e t z t e E l e g i e ( 1 9 4 2 )

D e u t s c h e s L i e d 1 9 3 7 ( 1 9 3 6 )

D i e M a s k e d e s B ö s e n ( 1 9 4 0 )

W o s o l l d a s h i n ? ( 1 9 3 7 )

L o b d e s L e r n e n s , O p 2 5 N o 7 ( 1 9 3 1 )

A u c h e i n S c h u m a c h e r ( 1 9 2 8 )

Ä n d e r e d i e W e l t , s i e b r a u c h t e s ( 1 9 3 0 )

What We Did Not Know

Music by Scott Gendel

Poetry by Perry Brass

“What We Did Not Know takes as its starting place a musical-theatreinfluenced open directness, a kind of deliberately naive simplicity & beauty that doesn’t shy away from the obvious, like these poems. But as each song progresses, it takes various turns away from that sound, following Perry’s storytelling into darker, stranger, deeper, and much more wonderfully complex places, drifting from that Broadway-inflected language into hyper-romantic wildness & musical mysticism ”

- Scott Gendel

A Feather at Times Square

I was there on the platform of the Times Square subway station, the IRT going downtown, when a small white feather fell to my feet, perhaps left from a pigeon, or dropped from heaven. The holidays had begun and snow was in the air, with the smell of cooking and the smell of homelessness, and the scent of winter perfumes and fur coats and tweeds, and hurrying and worrying which are always there. Till you slow down, and a certain quiet steps in f rom memories, from other times there,

when you remembered your first lovers, and friends who’d shopped with you, who are gone now but where? But if you stand still long enough, you may find at Times Square, a feather, just a tiny one, dropped from . . . heaven somewhere

As you leave the train

As you leave the train, please watch the gap between the train and the platform,

between the platform and heaven, between what you can accomplish

and what you desire to happen, between desire and impulse, between hopeless blind action and that singular moment of reflection when you become restored to humanity again after a weightless levitation to the spheres

in the wordless gap of tomorrow that appears now, on the other side.

Cnidarian

All speckled with light and jelly and silvered flecks of salt, all twisting and gliding and catching drools of amber before they fall into grist along the sand: it shoots a spew of water and wriggles forward, menacing, floating close Who says beauty is simple? Complicate me, detain me. Make me afraid; I will gasp to catch my breath, then bloat with air to come up, to become one with your layer beneath the waves, where sunlight is refracted in my observant pulse, where any dream is lethal until the night sucks the tide through its course.

What We Did Not Know

That we would pay for the foolish greed of others with our destiny, our own children. That we could fail the rich gifts given us by the earth, the seasons, the mysteries of life uncoiling by themselves, and not see their messengers sent by the winds, the seas, the land

in gripping pain. That we would ache for things we could not have but know them only in the courage of wise people What we did not know

Starlight at Canaan

This dance of light from afar in the heavens, five hundred feet up in the woods, with shooting stars and meteorites and comets glowing leaving paths of crystals burning above, necks craning, eyes opening gateways to the heart, so deep, expanding, as far as the firmament is high, and black. True black, but etched with constellations we see now clear as dreams, such things more magical than art, more real than eons of fiction how did this come back to us, from so far that mastodons seem recent and the Ice Age only yesterday; and yet here we are in the eye ’ s bright wonder in its perfect acceptance of marvel, while stars shoot above and leave their message for each to behold: this is a thing you cannot keep, but must know, must accept, like the silent paths holy men cut into the complex schemes of human life

was so small we could hold it in our hands and bring it to our hearts: the meaning of closeness and of truth.

Terezin Ghetto Requiem

Music by Sylvie Bodorová

Originally for voice and string quartet, piano transcription by Allan Armstrong Texts excerpted from Hebrew liturgy (Ashkenazi pronunciation) and the Latin Requiem

“The inspiration for Terezín Ghetto Requiem is based on the twenty performances of Verdi’s Requiem which took place in the Terezín ghetto during 1943 and 1944.

The legacy of the holocaust doesn’t belong only to the prisoners and victims, but to all of us who couldn’t or wouldn’t help. I often asked myself how people could allow all that happened in Terezín and other concentration camps during World War II If they had known the consequences- including endless lists of murdered- could or would they have prevented it? Why did they not act?

I had always been afraid to visit the memorial in Terezín I had been afraid of the walls, which had witnessed so much. Then I realized that not only did the Nazi Übermenschen kill, not only did the walls of Terezín strike fear, but that the fear itself, raised in the minds of those living outside the ghetto, too, had the power to kill That’s why I knew I had to accept this commission. I wanted to honour those who, under the most extreme conditions and in the face of death, found the courage to protest against their torture by means of something as ultimately human as Verdi’s Requiem.

In September 1997, when my composition was almost finished, I too, like the prisoners in 1943/44, heard Verdi’s Requiem at Terezín. I was dwarfed by the walls surrounding the Ghetto; how much humiliation is soaked into them But when the music started I looked up and felt an extraordinary sense of liberation. And as the music came to an end the small group of survivors gathered in front of the stage were suddenly and magically illuminated by the setting sun.

I would like my composition to assist towards the goal of eternal humanity and tolerance.”

- Sylvie Bodorová

Tonight’s performance of Terezín Ghetto Requiem will be accompanied by drawings by Czech artist Bedřich Fritta, who was imprisoned at the Terezín ghetto for several years before being relocated to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in November, 1944.

Lacrymosa

Shema Yisrael, Adoshem elokeinu, Adoshem echad.

Hu Elokeinu, Hu avinu, Hu malkeinu, Hu moishienu, V’hu yashmienu

B’rachamov shenis le’einei kol chai

Lihyos lachem l’Eloikim.

Hear, Israel, The Lord is our God, The Lord is One, He is our God He is our Father, He is our King, He is our Savior, He will deliver us In the presence of all living To be for you a God.

Dies irae

Dies irae, dies illa, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sybilla. Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus!

Ga’al Yisrael!

Day of mourning, day of wrath, Will dissolve the world in ashes, As foretold by David and the Sibyl. Great trembling there will be When the Judge descends To examine all things!

Redeemer of Israel!

Libera me

Libera me, Domine! Dies irae, dies illa.

Elokai neshama

Shenasata bi tohoiru hi

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Domine, libera me.

Deliver me, oh God! Day of mourning, day of wrath

My God, the soul which You bestowed in me is pure

Grant them eternal rest, Lord, And let perpetual light shine on them. Lord, deliver me

Four Songs on Chinese Poetry

Music by Pavel Haas

Text by various Chinese poets (credited in each song), translated to Czech by Bohumil Mathesius

Pavel Haas was a Czech composer who was deported to the Terezín ghetto in 1941 While there, the operatic bass Karel Berman, a fellow prisoner, commissioned Haas to compose this song cycle. These Czech translations of Chinese poems were likely recalled from memory by Haas

His reasoning for choosing these texts is clear They are infused with a deep yearning for home and peace, but that yearning contains little hope. Even the brightest moments in these poems contain a sense of pervasive melancholy

For Haas, this melancholy mirrors the reality of his surroundings at Terezín. At various points in the cycle you will hear implied sounds of trains bustling about: it was clear to the inmates of Terezín where their next train ride led. In 1944, Pavel Haas was part of a large group of artists and performers who were moved from Terezín to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

That group of Auschwitz deportees included composer Hans Krása and the children who formed the cast of his children’s opera Brundibar, which had just been filmed at Terezín as part of a propaganda film the Nazis made for the Red Cross

This evening’s performance of Four Songs will be accompanied by art made by children in the Terezín ghetto from 1942-1944. The images were scanned from the book I never saw another butterfly , published in 1978 by Schocken Books, which ends with the following statement:

“A total of around 15,000 children under the age of 15 passed through Terezín Of these, around 100 came back.”

I heard the cry of the wild geese, by Wej

Jing-wu

Domov je tam, Daleko tam, Mĕlo bys domů, Zbloudilé srdce!

Za cizí noci, V podzimním dešti; Když nejvíc studil

Smutku chladny van: Ve vysokém domĕ svém zaslech jsem

Křik divokych husi.

Právĕ přilétly. .

Domov je daleko tam

Home is there, Far away there, You should go home, Stray heart! In foreign night, In autumn rain; When most chilled Of sadness cold breeze: In my own loft home I overheard The cry of wild geese. Just now they flew in Home is far away there

In the bamboo grove, by Wang Wej

V bambusech nejsou lidé

V bambusech sedím sám, Tu na loutnu zahraju tiše, Tu sobĕ zahvízdám.

Kdo, řeknĕte, lidé, kdo vi, Kde v bambusech sedím sám

A na vychod srpečku luny Bambusem pozírám?

In the bamboos there are no people, In the bamboos I sit alone. Here on my lute I play softly, Here I whistle to myself. Who, tell me, people, who knows, IWhere in the bamboos I sit alone And at a small rising crescent moon I gaze through the bamboos?

The moon is far from home, by Čchang

Ťiou-lin

Z temného moře

Vyrůstá mĕsíc.

V daleké zemi

Ted’ rozkvétá též. Láska svůj truchlí

Daremny sen–

Čeká, čeká na vzdáleny večer

Jasnĕji mĕsíc

Svítí v mé hoře.

Noční šat oblékám–

Chladné je jíní.

Ruce mé, ruce, Kterak jste prázdné, Řici to všechno!

Spánku, sen nemůžeš dát: Mé toužení stale mĕ budí.

From the gloomy sea

Grows the moon

In a distant land

Now it is blossoming too

Love mourns its

Futile dream–

It waits, it waits for a far-off evening. More brightly the moon

Shines in my grief

I put on nighttime clothes–Chilly is the hoarfrost

My hands, hands, How empty you are, To say it all!

Sleep, you cannot give me a dream: My longing always awakens me

A sleepless night, by Chan I

Vĕtrem se bambus houpá, Na kámen mĕsíc sed.

Do chvĕní Mléčné dráhy

Stín divoké kachny vlét.

Na naše shledání myslím

Vička má míjí sen.

Zatím co radostí zpívám, Strak repot vzbouzí už den.

In the wind the bamboo rocks, On stone the moon sits.

To the wavering Milky Way

The shadow of a wild duck flies up. I think of our reunion, Dream avoids my eyelids. While with joy I sing, The magpies’ chatter wakes the day.

Selected songs on war

Music by Hanns Eisler

Text by Bertolt Brecht

The final group tonight are songs taken from various sources, all with music by Hanns Eisler and words by Bertolt Brecht, two men who went into political exile after their works were banned in Nazi Germany in 1933.

Eisler would eventually settle in the United States and become an Oscar-nominated film composer However, his American career came to an end when he was blacklisted by Hollywood and twice brought before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Despite vocal support from artists like Charlie Chaplin, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, Eisler was deported from the US in 1948. Before leaving the country, Eisler issued the following public statement:

“I leave this country not without bitterness and infuriation I could well understand it when in 1933 the Hitler bandits put a price on my head and drove me out. They were the evil of the period; I was proud at being driven out. But I feel heartbroken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way ”

It can often become an easy thing to see the events of the 1930’s and 40’s as things of the past. This group of songs draws your attention towards the universality of human experience across time, and it asks each of us to re-evaluate our own role in the conflicts that threaten humanity in the 21st century.

Die Heimkehr / Homecoming (1944)

My hometown, how will I find it?

Following the squads of bombers shall I come home.

Where then does it lie?

Where the enormous mountains of smoke stand, that’s it in the furnace there.

My hometown, how will it greet me?

Bombers precede me, deadly swarms signal my return, conflagrations travel ahead of its son.

Die letzte Elegie / The Last Elegy (1941)

Jets circle protectively, high over the four cities, In order to, presumably, keep the stink of greed and misery from getting up to them

Deutsches Lied 1937 / German Song 1937 (1936)

They speak again of great times

(Marie, don’t cry.)

The chandler has already chalked us up

They speak again of honor. (Marie, don’t cry )

There is no more to grab in the cupboard.

They speak again of victory. (Marie, don’t cry )

They will not catch me yet.

The armies are moving (Marie, don’t cry.)

If I return, I will return under different flags

So don’t cry

Die Maske des Bösen / The Demon’s Mask (1940)

On my wall hangs a Japanese woodworking, The mask of an evil demon, Painted with gold enamel.

Sympathetically I look upon the swollen forehead veins, which imply: How strenuous it is, being evil.

Wo soll das hin? / Where to now? (1935)

Grandfather Stöffel eats his spread with a spoon

The Crooked Line cooks horsemeat in margarine. Widow Plem washes underwear for her eldest twice a week.

The family Schober turns on their heat already in October

The light of the Turning Spruce often burns after 9 o ’clock.

If one hears such as this, one says, without hesitation, Such a people must be destroyed

Lob des Lernens / Praise of Learning (1931)

Learn the simplest, the time has come, it’s never too late!

Learn the ABC’s, it’s not enough, but learn them! Don’t let it annoy you, begin! You must know all!

You must take charge of your path!

Learn, man in the asylum! Learn, man in prison! Learn, wife in the kitchen! Learn, 60-year-olds!

Seek out school, you homeless!

Obtain knowledge, frozen ones!

You hungry, reach for a book: it is a weapon!

You must take charge of your path!

Be not afraid to question, comrade!

Let nothing dissuade you, see yourself through!

What you don’t know yourself, you do not know.

Look over the bill, you ’ re the one who must pay it

Lay your finger on every post and ask: how did this come to be here?

You must take charge of your path!

P R O G R A M N O T E S

Auch ein Schuhmacher / A Shoemaker Also (c. 1934)

When my mother birthed me, She didn’t consider, That a person couldn’t make a life Out of fifty years of misery

A shoemaker also cannot Make a shoe from two old postcards; We cannot expect it of him, For the man hasn’t learned to do that

I went to Essen for school, And I learned (in winter by light), Yet I didn’t learn how man quiets hunger. That knowledge isn’t useful to me

A shoemaker also

And I traveled on the train from Essen And departed at Ruhrort And dug a hole for thirty years And didn’t dig anything up

A shoemaker also

They came with blood-red flags, And a cross upon them. This was a giant hook For the downtrodden man

A shoemaker also

They give us no food

And take the plates away from us. They say: build an empire! And give us muck with which to build

Yet a shoemaker also

Ändere die Welt, sie braucht es / Change the world, it needs it (1930)

With whom does the duty not sit, to help the right?

What medicine tastes too ill for the dying?

What low act would you not commit in order to wipe out low acts?

If you could finally change the world, what would you be too good for?

Sink into filth, embrace the butcher, but change the world: it needs it!

Who are you?

A B O U T T H E P E R F O R M E R S

B a r i t o n e Z a c h a r y C o a t e s i s a f e r v e n t i n t e r p r e t e r o f s o n g , D r . C o a t e s h a s g i v e n r e c i t a l s a c r o s s t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s a n d i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y . C o a t e s ’ s v o c a l s t u d i e s h a v e i n c l u d e d S t a n i s l a v s k i T e c h n i q u e , a n d h e h a s p e r f o r m e d w i t h o p e r a c o m p a n i e s a c r o s s t h e c o u n t r y i n c l u d i n g M i c h i g a n O p e r a T h e a t e r , O p e r a P h i l a d e l p h i a , S p o l e t o F e s t i v a U S A , a n d O p e r a N o r t h . H e i s c u r r e n t l y a l e c t u r e r i n m u s i c i n v o i c e , t e a c h i n g a p p l i e d v o i c e a n d g r a d u a t e c o u r s e s i n S o n g L i t e r a t u r e a t I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y .

A l l a n A r m s t r o n g i s t h e o f f i c i a l a c c o m p a n i s t o f t h e M e t r o p o l i t a n O p e r a N a t i o n a l C o u n c i l A u d i t i o n s a n d h a s b e e n a p r i n c i p a l p r o d u c t i o n p i a n i s t a n d c o a c h a t E u g e n e O p e r a , O p e r a C o l o r a d o , S t . P e t e r s b u r g O p e r a , O p e r a o n t h e A v a l o n , S u g a r C r e e k O p e r a , T e l A v i v S u m m e r O p e r a P r o g r a m , a n d O p e r a T a m p a H e h a s a l s o c o a c h e d , r e c o r d e d , a n d b e e n a f e a t u r e d s o l o i s t p i a n i s t w i t h a n d f o r p r e s t i g i o u s m u s i c i a n s a n d c o m p o s e r s . A r m s t r o n g i s c u r r e n t l y a n a s s i s t a n t p r o f e s s o r o f m u s i c i n v o i c e a t t h e I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y J a c o b s S c h o o l o f M u s i c , w h e r e h e s p e c i a l i z e s i n a r t s o n g l i t e r a t u r e a n d o p e r a c o a c h i n g .

BECOME A PATRON

U T R G V P a t r o n o f t h e A r t s h a s a r e n e w e d p u r p o s e , a l l o w i n g y o u t o i n v e s t i n t h e p r e s e n t a n d f u t u r e o f t h e A r t s i n t h e R i o G r a n d e V a l l e y ! W i t h y o u r s u p p o r t , U T R G V w i l l c o n t i n u e t o b r i n g w o r l d - c l a s s p e r f o r m a n c e s a n d e v e n t s t o t h e V a l l e y a n d t r a i n f u t u r e V a l l e y a r t i s t s . W e a r e a b l e t o b r i n g t h e s e a m a z i n g p e r f o r m e r s a n d f e a t u r e o u r o w n U T R G V f a c u l t y a n d s t u d e n t s b e c a u s e o f g e n e r o u s d o n o r s l i k e y o u . B y d o n a t i n g a s l i t t l e a s $ 1 0 0 0 p e r m o n t h , y o u w i l l b e c o m e a m e m b e r o f t h e P a t r o n o f t h e A r t s , o u r p r e m i e r e c i r c l e o f s u p p o r t e r s o f U T R G V A R T S . W i t h t h i s m e m b e r s h i p , y o u w i l l r e c e i v e d i s c o u n t e d t i c k e t s t o a l l o f o u r e v e n t s – t h e m o r e y o u d o n a t e , t h e g r e a t e r y o u r d i s c o u n t ! C l i c k h e r e t o b e c o m e a P a t r o n o f t h e A r t s .