UMaine Music Professor Phillip Silver Joins Advisory Board for International Music Project
Contact: George Manlove at (207) 581-3756
ORONO — Phillip Silver, a UMaine associate professor of music, research and performance, has joined the advisory board of The Inextinguishable Symphony Project, an international educational project that tells the story of the little-known Jewish Cultural Association, formed in 1933 in Nazi Germany.
Based on the book, “The Inextinguishable Symphony,” published in 2001 by music scholar and former National Public Radio host Martin Goldsmith, the project includes a 90-minute Public Broadcasting Service television documentary, a worldwide concert tour, a collection of CDs and companion educational programs. It is expected to reach 58 million people in the United States and around the world in major cities from Los Angeles to Berlin, beginning in 2005.
The book and documentary are based on Goldsmith’s research on the Jewish cultural organization Kulturbund Deutsche Juden (“The Cultural Association of German Jews”) formed as a private venue for Jewish performers and artists after the Third Reich banned Jews from public employment. The title of the book and documentary draw their names from Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4: The Inextinguishable Symphony.
Goldsmith’s parents were members of the Kulturbund orchestra, but were able to get exit visas to the United States in 1941 — the year the Nazis disbanded the Kulturbund and shipped its members to concentration camps.
As an advisory board member with the project, Silver joins 13 international authorities on Holocaust era music, including Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Bret Werb, music specialist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Eugenia Zukerman, flutist and correspondent for CBS News’ “Sunday Morning.”
Silver, whose own relatives died in the Holocaust, says he is privileged to be asked to serve on the advisory board.
“I didn’t think twice about it,” he says. “I said I would gladly participate.”
The film, expected to be released in early 2005, includes rarely seen archival footage of the Kulturbund in its hey-day, in addition to interviews with Goldsmith, his father and other surviving members of the organization. The project is an opportunity to preserve an important glimpse at pre-World War II history, according to Silver.
As an advisory board member, Silver will help promote and publicize The Inextinguishable Symphony Project, which relies on charitable contributions for funding. His role will take him to New York City in May to perform music of Ignaz Strasfogel, composer and former conductor for the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera who emigrated from Germany to the United States.
In addition to teaching, Silver, a pianist and recognized authority on music of the Holocaust era, lectures and performs internationally and on a regular basis at UMaine. His annual “Thwarted Voices” concerts feature the diversity of music of the Holocaust. On the UMaine faculty since 1998, Silver also has recorded several CDs under the Koch/Schwann label.