The Jacksonville Symphony and Jacksonville Symphony Chorus will be performing "Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps" Wednesday evening, at the Florida Times Union Center.
Donald McCullough, Jacksonville Symphony director, arranged the piece after a year of researching songs and stories that recounted life in Nazi Concentration camps.
“I have always had this fascination with music that was created out of human experience,” said McCullough during Tuesday's First Coast Connect, “something that would speak to daily life, the emotions of people, what things were like. ... It can be really powerful.”
Prior to composing the Holocaust Cantata, McCullough was the founder and music director of two Norfolk-based choruses, which formed his admiration for folk music.
McCullough compares his newly composed music to his previous folk genre work. It allows you to experience real life stories and personal experiences through music, he said.
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Wednesday evening and ends Thursday evening, the symphony will perform "In the Shadow of the Holocaust" and "We Remember Them."
McCullough says the songs and stories that make up the Holocaust Cantata is the music of the people and the music of the time, which is why he believes it impacts the listeners so immensely.
He added that the songwriters in the concentration camps were talented musically but not classically trained, so it renders a unique sound that triggers the act of remembrance which commemorates the incredible human spirits that survived.
“There is a power in hearing small individual stories that are a tiny fraction from the millions that were murdered," he said "But encountering it face to face like that is quite different and powerful and makes it a personal experience for you, rather than something that is intellectually understood in numbers.”