Rossi fest Belgrade

The piece Forced march is composed on the text of the poem of the same name, by Hungarian poet of Jewish descent, Miklós Radnóti. The poet spent a part of WWII in the copper mine in the city of Bor, which was used as a concentration camp at the time. During  the forced labor Radnóti wrote poems that were found in the pocket of his pants after the exhumation and later published under the title Bor Notebook. I find Radnóti`s poetry and the story of him very personal, given that I am a native of Bor. 

Ensemble: clarinet, piano, drum / tambour, baritone, cello;

Marko Kranfilovski was born in Bor, Serbia in 1994. He gained his BA (2017) and MA (2019) Degrees in Composition at the Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade, under prof. Tatjana Milošević Mijanović. He attended masterclasses by distinguished composers, such as Ivo Medek, Dimitris Andrikopoulos and Yinam Leef. His pieces were performed in numerous concerts and festivals in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and USA. He also writes music for short films, theater plays and commercials.

My chamber ensemble piece Paths...Shadows is based on compiled phrases from Antonina Żabińska’s diary Ludzie i zwierzęta (released in 1968) and from Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio written in the early 14th century. Both highly contrasting text sources were merged into a text collage, which shows connecting lines between two different stories in different times as well as between Dante’s mystical world and real-life of Żabińska.

Ensemble: flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone, piano, soprano, violin, cello;

Otto Wanke has undertaken a series of musical studies: first jazz composition in Prague, later classical, film, and electroacoustic composition – under Karlheinz Essl, Iris ter Schiphorst, Wolfgang Liebhart in Vienna. Recently I have been active as a performer of electroacoustic music, working as a soloist as well as in cooperation with other musicians. In 2018 I was employed as an assistant at the Department of Ethnomusicology at the Music university of Vienna and I started doing a Ph.D. program.

First they came... is a somber meditation on Martin Niemöller's famous poem about the cowardice of many members of German society during the rise of the Nazis that led to the Holocaust. The ensemble tries to maintain unity, but bit by bit the instruments shy away from each other when the texture threatens them. One by one, their voices are cut short with each line of the poem, until only silence is left.

Ensemble: flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello;

Jorge Andrés Ballesteros is a composer and speaker based in Boston. A polystylist, his works center on classical music vernacular but include a range of musical styles. He is regularly commissioned to create projects and original works that engage with issues facing the community. He has written for groups such as the Chattanooga Symphony and the Mozart Society Orchestra. He received his BA in Music from Harvard University, where he studied with Chaya Czernowin, Edgar Barroso, and Trevor Bača.

Primo Levi is one of the cultural heroes of the Jewish history of the Holocaust. He deals in his writing with the human qualities he attributes to man which were taken from him during the Holocaust. In his poem Monday, he makes a jarring comparison of the sadness in the existence of the train and of the horse to the sadness in the existence of a man, showing a man is deprived of his humanity.In my work, I referred to the transition from the mechanics to the humanity that exists in the poem - from the metal- rhythmic train, to the horse, walking at the pace dictated to it and to the man who is perceived as having free choice.

I also referred to the rhythmic process in the poem - from the fast train that doesn't stop to the static, lonely person, who  has no purpose to go towards.

Ensemble: flute, clarinet, violin, cello;

Carmel Curiel (b.1998, Israel) is a composer and a violinist. She is a student at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, with Prof. Yinam Leef. Carmel received the Sharett Foundation excellence scholarship in composition. She won the 1st prize in the Israeli Composers Competition, and at Mark Kopytman Composition Contest. 2nd prize at Klon Award for emerging composers. Her pieces were played by the NY Philharmonic Orchestra, Iineraire Ensemble, I.C.S Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Meitar Ensemble, etc.

by my death... II is a standalone movement from a larger work that is the creative culmination of my doctoral research into representations of the Holocaust in music. It features two poems by Julia Kolchinsky: Inheritance and Away From Babi Yar. Both reflect on a personal story and relay the general narrative of Holocaust victims. The piece deals with the culture of remembrance of the Holocaust between tradition and innovation, past and future, and extermination and resurrection.

Ensemble: violin, reciter, live electronics;

Gil Dori is interested in interactive electronic music, graphic notation, proportional procedures, and Jewish music. In addition to his artistic work, Gil is a co-founder of the EyeHarp Association, a cooperative start-up that develops accessible digital instruments, based in Barcelona, Spain. He also teaches online computer music and sound design classes at Ben-Gurion University and Sapir Academic College, Israel. Gil holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Arizona State University.

In the Spaces, I still remember is a work for submission to Portraits of Remembrance (2022) based on The Six Righteous Among the Nations in Auschwitz. It serves as a contribution to the memory of these beautiful human beings that sought to preserve life among their communities. The narration provokes powerful imagery of a terrible time that the world will not soon forget. In keeping the memory alive of these courageous few we hope history will teach us how to be better.

Ensemble: Bb clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, piano, 2 percussionists: tubular bells, vibraphone, glockenspiel;

Chesney Palmer is a pianist, clarinetist, and emerging composer from South Africa with a keen interest in abstraction theories and the links between visual abstract art and music. As a synesthete, he uses his multi-associative experiences to explore abstract art in a personal way that emphasizes textures, shapes, and sounds in music. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. under Lukas Ligeti.

With my composition I want to pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Roma Holocaust. I was looking for inspiration, among other things, when visiting the memorial of the concentration camp in Hodonín near Kunštát. It brought me

appalling testimonies of human suffering and fundamentally affected my composition. For example, the rhythm of a small drum is supposed to evoke the beating stereotype of slave labor. The number 1396 is the number of prisoners who were in Hodonín.

Ensemble: alto saxophone, snare drum, cymbal;

Pavel Nesit was born in 1997 in Ostrava, where he also studied composition at the conservatory, under Milan Báchorek and Michal Janošík. Currently he is studying composition for fourth year at the Prague Academy of Music in the class of doc. Ph.D MgA. Slavomír Hořínka. In his current work, I prefer to work with limited compositional material and I focus on improving the purity of his compositional language. He has written a number of compositions for various ensembles (solo, choral, chamber or orchestral) and music for theater and film.

Jevrejski kamerni orkestar osnovao je 2012. godine violončeista Ladislav Mezei, u saradnji sa B'nei B'rit ložom Srbije, a članovi orkestra su profesionalni muzičari jevrejskog porekla i njihovih prijatelji. Primarni cilj orkestra predstavljanje muzike jevrejskih kompozitora, kao i drugih kompozitora čija su dela inspirisana jevrejskim temama, a interpretacija orkestra povezana je sa tradicijom, kulturom i istorijom jevrejske zajednice u Srbiji.