"The Holocaust was a human problem, not just a Jewish problem," says David Griggs-Janower, artistic director and conductor for Albany Pro Musica.

Genocide hasn’t stopped since World War II, he pointed out.
Albany Pro Musica, an auditioned community chorus, will perform three concerts as part of a 12-day multi-media festival to raise awareness about holocausts from World War II to the current situation in Darfur. The event, titled, "Out of the Darkness: From Holocaust to Hope" will feature lectures, a book-signing, poetry, and artwork, in addition to the choral concerts.
"Where do we go from genocide"" Griggs-Janower said he asked himself as he did research for the project. "Hope is how we climb out of despair."
He wanted to bring together the community and focus on peace, unity, and reconciliation, in response to global atrocities. "It’s really turned into quite the event," he told The Enterprise.
"We’ve tried to put together a group of activities that will reach more than the standard classical music lovers," Griggs-Janower said.
He began to formulate the idea after last March’s "wildly successful" choral performance and film event about Joan of Arc, Griggs-Janower said. "Voices of Light," as the program was called, drew about 1,600 people, he said.
"It was an experience more than a concert," he said, as his eyes lit up, remembering the impressive reception. "I had a sense that we should do it again this year."
The upcoming program "began as a concert of Jewish choral works, as we recorded our CD, titled ‘Chai: The Best of Jewish Choral Music’" I added the Holocaust Cantata, then music related to other genocides, to peace, hope, and brotherhood," Griggs-Janower told The Enterprise.
"The idea that ‘Music Saved Our Lives’ began to permeate much of how we were thinking," he said of the idea that acts as a theme for the program.

The program
Griggs-Janower devoted last summer to researching the Holocaust. "I’m Jewish, and I didn’t know much about the Holocaust," he said.

He contacted the Holocaust Survivors and Friends Education Center in Latham, and put together a panel discussion that was held last night. Two Holocaust survivors – Nora and Martin Becker – were on the panel along with Klaus Steinchen, who attended SS school in Bavaria when he was seven; the Schutzstaffel was an elite quasi-military unit of the Nazi party. The panel discussion was followed by a presentation of the film, La Bella Vita, about a man who tries to hold his family together and help his son cope with the horrors of a Jewish concentration camp. The discussion and film was held at Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady.
Sunday, March 4, the program follows up with a lecture and book-signing by Martin Goldsmith, the program director of XM Classics at XM Satellite Radio, and host of Performance Today on National Public Radio from 1989 to 1999. Goldsmith’s book, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Love and Music in Nazi Germany, "is an amazing book,’ Griggs-Janower said.

Griggs-Janower first got acquainted with the book after Steinchen told him that it changed his life. In the book, Goldsmith tells of the Jewish Kulturbund, an all-Jewish ensemble, of which Goldsmith’s parents were a part, that was sustained by the Nazis from 1933 to 1941. For the members of the musical group, the music saved their lives.

Albany Pro Musica will give an opening performance to Goldsmith’s lecture at 3 p.m. at Page Hall in Albany.

They will then perform a concert at the Congregation Berith Sholom in Troy on March 8 at 7:30 p.m.; all the proceeds from ticket sales from that performance will go to the Darfur campaign, Griggs-Janower said.
"Peace and justice are always on my mind as I read the newspaper everyday" I really wanted to have a section on Darfur," he said.

The group will also perform on March 10 at the First Reformed Church in Schenectady at 8 p.m., and on March 11 at Temple Israel in Albany at 3 p.m.

Each performance will be accompanied by artwork – an exhibit of mixed media produced by Guilderland High School graphic design students, an exhibit of paintings from students of the Robert Parker School in Wynantskill, and a collection of paintings loaned from the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

The artwork will also be on display at the Albany Museum of History and Art from March 12 through 30.
"It’s nice to have a concert with a focus," Griggs-Janower said.

Albany Pro Musica
Albany Pro Musica, was founded by Griggs-Janower 26 years ago. It was started as a chamber choir, he said, because "nobody was doing the chamber choir repertoire."
Griggs-Janower started college as a pre-med student. "I was always going to be a doctor," he said, "until I started studying music."
If music is in you, you have to do it, he said. "Music starts where words end."
Choral music is a combination of community, text, and music, he said. "You can express anything in such a deep, meaningful way" It’s just fantastic."
Griggs-Janower makes "all the decisions except financial" for the group, he said.

The group consists of about 60 volunteer singers, ranging in age from 25 to 70, he said.
The choir members have a "fierce loyalty," Griggs-Janower said. "People really care about the group" People rarely leave."
Pro Musica members come from all walks of life, he said. But, when on stage, the group has "one expressive goal."

While the singers were on a tour, they got stuck in a February snowstorm on their way home from Europe in Malaga on the coast of Spain, Griggs-Janower recalled. The group was stranded for a day at the airport there.

There were hundreds of people who were just getting angrier by the minute, he said.
"We started singing," he remembered. "You could just feel the tension lessen."
That wouldn’t happen with an orchestra, he said. "Their instruments would be packed away."
"That’s what we do," Griggs-Janower said of singing. Singing is what the members of Albany Pro Musica have chosen to do with their recreational time, he said.
"Their lives would not be the same without it," he said.
With "Out of the Darkness: From Holocaust to Hope," Griggs-Janower said that he’d really like to reach more people. "I would like people to go home from this saying, ‘That was meaningful, more than I expected.’"
"Music has that kind of power," he concluded.