Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) falls a week after the seventh day of Passover. This year’s solemn commemoration begins at sundown on April 23 and ends at nightfall on April 24.
As a part of this day of remembrance, in partnership with Boulder JCC, the Arts Hub in Lafayette will host an evening of theater, powerful music, and visual art from a variety of local artists with “Letters and Tracks: Stories of Resilience.” The mashup will commemorate the Holocaust victims as well as resistance efforts at the time and is on stage at 7 p.m. April 21 at The Arts Hub, 420 Courtney Way, Lafayette.
“Letters and Tracks” is a celebration of resilience, Arts Hub Artistic Director Kenzie Rosen-Stone said, as the event will feature music composition “Different Trains” by famed composer Steven Reich, as well as excerpts from the play “Paper Snow” by Laurie Scoggins.
“Different Trains,” penned in 1988, is a three-movement piece that will be performed by the Graduate String Quartet from the University of Colorado Boulder. Andrew Krimm, the Arts Hub executive director, and Rosen-Stone said that Reich was a Jewish man living in the United States who often took a train around the country to reflect during World War II. The music contemplates how the trains would be very different if Reich were travelling by train in Europe during the same time.
The music uses multiple forms of media to tell his story — the string quartet will play over the sounds of pre-recorded trains, spoken word and visuals, which will be provided by Lafayette artist David Fodel. The video accompaniment Fodel will provide includes a mix of video clips of real trains and abstract material representing trains and train tracks.
“I’ll be listening to the work and reacting accordingly,” said Fodel, who is also the director of the Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival, an annual experimental music and new media festival that kicks off in May.
The visuals will serve as a “fifth instrument” to the quartet playing the piece live, Fodel said.
“Paper Snow,” by Denver-based playwright Scoggins, tells the true story of Sophie and Hans Scholl and their resistance group, White Rose, which took a brave stand against the Nazi regime. The Arts Hub will present the 1930s flashback portions of the play at the April 21 event. With such a heavy topic at the forefront of the event, Krimm and Rosen-Stone said they wanted to highlight the positive efforts of people during the dark times.
“When you have a heavy piece, we felt like it needed to be highlighting the resilience and the resistance that happened during this time,” Rosen-Stone said.
Krimm said that art is a medium that allows people to interact with such heavy topics as the Holocaust, noting that creative works provide a portal for both the artist and the audience to better understand each other, while reflecting on the past.
Art is a great way to cope, Krimm said. He believes that artists create art to handle difficult topics and to express their feelings. He hopes that people leave the event remembering the strength and endurance of people during the Holocaust.
Tickets to the event are $15-$28 and are available at artshub.org.The event is sponsored by Steve Drouilhet and in partnership with Boulder Jewish Community Center.
