Chamber Music Marin presents The Black Oak Ensemble as part of their 2023-24 Chamber Music Concert Series, presenting world-renowned classical musicians in intimate concerts at affordable prices.
The Black Oak Ensemble consists of violinist Desirée Ruhstadt, cellist David Cunliffe, and violist Aurélien Fort Pederzoli. Currently in residence at the New Music School in Chicago, they concertize throughout Europe and North America.
The concert will include selections from their concert and recording project, “Silenced Voices,” string trios created by Jewish composers silenced by the Holocaust.
About Silenced Voices: Aurélien's mother, a history teacher who comes from a Sephardic family, devoted her life to bringing awareness to the Holocaust. One of her proudest endeavors was bringing students every year on a teaching voyage to Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Terezin.
In the spring of 2016, Desirée and David came back from Budapest, Hungary with string trios they had found in a local shop that were penned by young musicians who would not survive the holocaust. The pieces featured in Silenced Voices were among them. These pieces are fantastic works of art and, through their darkness, are incredibly human and ultimately uplifting. That such music could be written in these conditions is a testament to the resilience and faith of these artists.
The Black Oak Ensemble is committed to sharing this music with communities all across the country, in collaboration with not only synagogues, but also educational centers, and the rest of the world.
Our hope is for this project to speak for those who were so brutally silenced during the Pogroms, the Exiles and the Shoah. Ordinary people suffered, artists suffered, and their voices needed to be heard. - The Black Oak Ensemble