Liberated Voices
Liberated Voices

Liberated Voices

80 Years of Broken Silence, hosted and curated by James Conlon and Cori Ellison, with Fellows of the Singers Program

Steans Institute Series
Sat, Aug 9, 2025 1:30 PM Tickets

About the Performance

Program

Eighty years ago, the concentration camps of the Third Reich were liberated, but not before two generations of Jewish, immigrant, activist, and minority musicians were suppressed or silenced. Those who lost their productivity or their lives were seemingly fated to be forgotten after the war.

But in the decades since, much music thought to have been lost has been rediscovered, and new creations of the captive artists have joined the canon. Meanwhile, the music of Hollywood and Broadway would not have flourished without the artists who were fortunate to escape the Nazi regime and find refuge in the United States.

Whether experiencing their darkest hours or the brightest of spotlights, these artists of the first half of the 20th century shared a creative spark that reveals and revels in the inspirational spirit of the time. And in their own way, each work is a song of resistance against totalitarianism.

In “Liberated Voices,” James Conlon and Cori Ellison honor the lives forever changed by the Nazi concentration camps with a program of stories and performances of the composers who fled or fell victim to them. Many of these artists were among the first — and can now be heard and remembered among the most engaging and imaginative — to fuse into classical symphony and song, producing both brilliant art music and a golden era of tunes for the theatrical stage and screen.