It was a great experience arranging and performing this piece with my mom, Starr Parodi for an upcoming documentary "Won't Be Silent". Here is more about the story: Wolf Durmashkin was a child prodigy in Vilna, Poland who began playing the piano at age six, performing by age seven, composed countless original pieces of music, and at twenty-five years old, became the youngest conductor of the Vilna Symphony Orchestra before World War II.
When his family was thrown into the Vilna Ghetto in 1941, Wolf received a dispensation to continue working as the conductor of the orchestra but returned nightly to the Ghetto. He and a few musicians gradually smuggled through the barbed wire, all the instruments, INCLUDING A PIANO, that Wolf reassembled piece by piece, and created the Ghetto Orchestra, performing 35 concerts—attended by the Nazis. He also created a 100 Voice Choir and a Music School for Children because he knew that music would feed the souls of those enslaved.
Wolf believed that people starving from hunger could at least nourish their spirits because music is life. While in captivity, he wrote the melody to Won’t Be Silent, whose original title was Stay Silent, because that’s how the prisoners showed resistance to the Nazis. Wolf’s legacy will live on through this song and its new message of hope because now more than ever we can’t and won’t be silent.
0 Comments