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Oyfn Veg (On the Road)
This story was told to Itsik Manger, composer of the original Oyfn Veg, by Marek Edelman. Marek Edelman was one of the great Bundists of Poland, a surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the armed resistance by the Jews that lasted 3 weeks and kept the S.S. from continuing their evacuation of the Ghetto): "The Warsaw Ghetto was in its death throes. In order to subdue the remaining Ghetto fighters, the Germans began throwing incendiary bombs into the buildings. The heat became unbearable. Thousands burned to death. We had little ammunition left. Only one choice - to abandon our bunkers and try to make our way outside, to the tunnels that led to the Aryan side. Coming out of our bunker, we were stunned. The whole Ghetto was in flames. This must have been what Jerusalem looked like when the Romans destroyed it, what Rome must have looked like when Nero burned it. Then suddenly a girl in our band began to recite, or better, to mutter: "Oyfn veg shteyt a boym/ shteyt er ayngeboygn/ Ale feygl funem boym/ zenen zich tzefloygn. . ." (On the road stands a tree, all bent over. All the birds in the tree have flown away). She barely muttered it, but we all heard it. And we felt that not only had the birds departed, but everyone- fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters..." Manger added: "I wrote that song in the 30's, in tribute to my mother, a simple woman who couldn't read or write but had an ocean of love, love that could become too heavy for even the strongest wings. But the song itself now belongs to that unknown girl in the Warsaw Ghetto. She hallowed it in the last seconds of her life in the glare of the Ghetto flames."

more info:
Oyfn Veg www.youtube.com/watch?v=45KYqWpZKso

Commissioned by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
(Premiere performance in 2020 by Cantata Profana -
Daniel Schlosberg piano, Jacob Ashworth violin)

credits

from And I Always Thought, released March 30, 2022
Martin Bresnick composer
Elly Toyoda violin
Lisa Moore piano

Recorded Nov 7 2021
Firehouse 12 New Haven CT
Audio Engineer Greg DiCrosta
Audio Mixer/Editor Nick Lloyd

Video (and track art photo) Mateusz Zechowski
Video Editor Elly Toyoda

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Martin Bresnick New Haven, Connecticut

From the Bronx, New York City, Bresnick delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. At times his musical ideas spring from hardscrabble sources, often with a very real political import. ... more

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