A performing-arts organization in Seattle explores questions of human rights and social justice through the transformative power of music.
When Mina Miller founded Music of Remembrance in 1998, the nonprofit was focused on ensuring that the voices of the Holocaust were heard. Over time, she says, the mission has expanded. “We have evolved to honor the resilience of all people who’ve been persecuted or excluded, people for their ethnic background, for their faith, for their gender, their sexuality,” she says. “It’s become an organization that’s been extremely responsive to the times.”
Music of Remembrance was founded to ensure the voices of the Holocaust were heard. It now honors all people who have been persecuted.
The organization’s Testimonies for Tomorrow program has commissioned more than 45 new works. The operas, song cycles, dances, and other pieces focus on topics like the Armenian genocide, Japanese Americans’ experiences in internment camps in World War II, and the current struggle for women’s rights in Iran.
Music of Remembrance stages the first performances of the works, and many go on to be performed by other groups. The organization commissioned composer Jake Heggie to write a work that explored Nazi persecution of gay men during the Holocaust. Together with librettist Gene Scheer, he created For a Look or a Touch, which premiered in 2007. Since then, it’s been performed many times, as an opera, song cycle, and choral music.
“That’s had hundreds of performances around the world, not only with small ensembles, but with men’s choruses,” Miller says. “It’s really a fixture in the repertoire for LGBT rights.”
Music of Remembrance relies on individuals and foundations for more than 90 percent of its fundraising budget. But it lost a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for its production of After Life in Seattle and San Francisco this month. In the opera, which the group commissioned in 2015, the ghosts of Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso debate the role of art and the artist in troubled times.
Below, Music of Remembrance‘s 2023 production of the opera For a Look or a Touch.
