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Cover Stories

Making (Up) a Difference: The Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund

November 9, 2022 by Ronni Diamondstein

The HGSF team inside Horace Greeley High School
Photo by Carolyn Simpson

Every Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund Board meeting begins with the reading aloud of a note of thanks from a scholarship recipient or the parent of one. The notes that are scrubbed of identity are heartfelt: “Without you, the Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund, I don’t know what I would have done. I am GRATEFUL, and words will never tell you how much your contribution is doing for me” and “Please know that I will someday achieve my dreams. I will always look back and be GRATEFUL to the Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund forever.” Board President Peggy Macchetto says, “It’s a way of focusing on the Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund’s mission of neighbors helping neighbors.”

The Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund (HGSF)’s objective is to “make up the difference” between the actual costs of college and all other financial resources available to students and their families. The goal is to make college a reality for all Greeley students. Megan Conroy is one of the recipients who will be eternally grateful to HGSF. The 2017 Greeley grad graduated from Adelphi University’s nursing school program in 2021 and is working as a medical surgical nurse at NYU Langone in Mineola. “I probably wouldn’t have been able to graduate if I didn’t get the money,” says Conroy. “I was touched that every year I got some grant.”

HGSF Scholarship Recipient Megan Conroy

There’s no question that there is a very high cost of a college education these days. Tuitions are rising yearly for both private and public schools. Macchetto is not surprised about the need in the community. “The cost of education and raising kids has grown exponentially. Families are facing things like that and having the disposable income to pay for college has become more of a challenge.”

Applicants may apply all through their college years and the grants are based on need. It is open to any Greeley grad who is pursuing a four-year degree any of those years and they must apply each year as their financial situations may change. “We are looking for kids to get the degree. We want them to get through and to facilitate that as much as we can,” says Macchetto. The process is objective and extremely confidential. Their newly launched updated website makes it very easy to apply with a very high level of security. An outside consultant reviews the financial situation of each applicant and recommends the distribution to the Board’s Grants Committee. The only member of the Board who knows the identity of the recipients is the Board Treasurer who cuts the checks. It’s entirely a need-based system. “Everyone who qualifies gets something. Based on their gap, we look through how much we can cover that is meaningful enough to get to where they need to go,” says Macchetto. “The current cap per applicant is $20,000 per year. The average grant in 2022 was just over $8,000.” In 2021 they were able to grant $403K of $883K that was demonstrated as need.

“Our donor base is helping the same kid who is on the same sports team as your kid or the kid you’re on line next to at Lange’s. Even though it is anonymous, it’s all about the community, we have a lot to be proud of,” says Macchetto. “And it’s another example of our community prioritizing and valuing education,” says Julianne Cohn Metzger, Vice President of the HGSF Board. “We’re assisting our neighbors, our neighbors’ children and friends to continue the education they’ve been lucky to have here in Chappaqua.”

The seeds for the HGSF were planted in 1945 when the senior class of Horace Greeley High School gave $300 to start a fund for students who needed help paying for college. That spirit of students helping students has continued with the Greeley PTA Senior Musical that is a fundraiser for the HGSF as well as the very popular fall Spelling Bee that is run by the Greeley S.H.A.R.E club. “Another great way of students helping students,” says Macchetto. “The Bee is open to a wide variety of the community. While it’s academic, it’s about having a good time.”

The fall annual appeal mailing and the spring event are the two major fundraising vehicles. “The spring benefit is a nice way of getting everyone together and will be in person this year,” says Macchetto. Another fundraising tool is Senior Signs currently priced at $20.23 for the class of 2023. “It’s a fundraiser but it’s also teambuilding and getting our logo out,” says Macchetto. On the horizon is a Pickleball Tournament, and people may also make donations in honor of or in memory of someone.

Each year two members of the Chappaqua Central School District Community are honored at the benefit. This past spring Rita Santelia received the Taylor Family Award of Distinction for student and community support that goes above and beyond. Santelia, the mother of five, has been a parent volunteer over many years including PTA Chair of both Bell School and Horace Greeley High School. “I was so humbled to receive this award,” says Santelia. “I wondered how this could just be for me since I wasn’t doing each volunteer experience alone.” She was very involved with the Senior Musical, and it means a lot to her to know that her work on the Senior Musicals would be another way to help seniors and the HGSF. “All proceeds from the show are donated. In years prior to Covid, Senior Musical has been a huge benefactor to the Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund through the help of the community that comes out to watch the shows,” says Santelia. “We look forward to many more to come, as they will be great benefactors of the Horace Greeley Scholarship again and again.”

Joe Kearns, recipient of the Ed Habermann Award, and Rita Santelia, recipient of the Taylor Award of Distinction.
Photo courtesy of HGSF

Joe Kearns, a Chappaqua physical education teacher and the varsity football coach who was the winner of the Ed Habermann Award last spring, grew up in Millwood and was a recipient of HGSF scholarships. Bridging the financial gap with scholarships from the HGSF made a difference for the 1996 Greeley grad and his three younger sisters who also received grants for their four years of school. Kearns attended New England College in New Hampshire and studied Kinesiology. The award made Kearns appreciate where he came from and how willing people were to help. “It was really cool that a place that’s known for its wealth would have a scholarship set up for people in its own town that don’t have much money,” says Kearns. “It gives you a sense of pride and appreciation to the point where I wanted to come back. When you teach and coach here and you know that it’s a community where the only reason you got to go to college and got to be a teacher was because of the generosity of the people here.”

Winning the Habermann Award that honors a member of the community for their dedication to students was very meaningful for Kearns. “It’s the biggest honor you could get. You’re being recognized for the whole reason you got into education,” says Kearns.

Kearns has thoughts on why it’s important to support the HGSF. “They say charity starts at home. There’s an assumption that nobody needs it. We have a community that’s overall wealthy, but we have people in need, I think it’s important to support them.”

Cohn Metzger sums up the importance of supporting the HGSF. “For many families in our community it makes a difference between enrolling and not enrolling, and for their child to pursue their dreams. Your contributions enable them to do so.”

For more information about the Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund, or to apply or donate, go to their new and improved site hgsf.org

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Chappaqua Schools, College Tuition, Habermann Award, HGSF, Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund, Scholarships

The Donald Art Company Collection: Own a Piece of History

November 9, 2022 by Pia Haas

BY PIA HAAS AS TOLD BY VIVIEN BONNIST CORD

Vivien Bonnist Cord, a long time Armonk resident, along with her siblings, Randolph Bonnist of Norwalk, CT and Claudia Bonnist of Jackson, WY, inherited the Donald Art Company Collection from their father, Donald Bonnist, upon his retirement.

The collection of paintings are the originals from which The Donald Art Company made reproductions that were sold in all major department stores between 1940-1984.

Chances are you grew up with one on your wall.

In what follows, Vivien takes us behind the scenes of her family’s historic collection:

Donald Bonnist started The Donald Art Company from meager beginnings, and it became the largest fine art publishing business in the world in its time. I recall our father as being soft spoken, hating conflicts (especially good when I misbehaved!), and a “workaholic” who spent many years as the proverbial ‘traveling salesman’ as he believed in making personal contact with artists, suppliers, and distributors world-wide, which took him away from home way too often.

Before there was the Donald Art Company (DAC) there was M. B. & Z. Starting in 1924 Donald and his father, Maurits Bonnist, worked together to develop their art publishing business, M. Bonnist & Zonen in Amsterdam, Holland. One of their specialties was a series of movie star photo postcards for which they had the exclusive rights, and which are still sought after by collectors. Maurits Bonnist died young of a heart attack and in order to support his mother and siblings, Donald had to drop out of high school to run the business.

In 1939, Donald and Serine van Embden (an artist in her own right) came to America on their honeymoon and were unable to return to their homeland due to the escalation of WWII. This twist of fate saved their lives, as most of their family members were murdered by the Nazis.

In America, a new company was born in our parents small rented apartment in Forest Hills, NY. They worked together to pack picture orders using their bed as a table. In the mid 1940s when I was four, we moved to Larchmont and our father bought a building on Spencer Place in Mamaroneck as his first formal headquarters.

The business continued to grow and after about 20 years, when the Mamaroneck building was outgrown, our father moved DAC to Port Chester where he built the Donald Art Plaza in 1965. A 70,000 square foot building, it housed offices, warehouse space and “Gallery 90” where The Donald Art Company Collection could finally be displayed. There was also a sales office in NYC and in Los Angeles, CA. DAC developed initially as a publisher of paper art reproduction by lithography for the picture framing industry but in 1960 Donald partnered with Gus Montovano of Litho-Craft of New England to develop a technique for printing on artist canvas, textured to feel like brush strokes.

Our father could never have imagined the confusion this would create, distinguishing a canvas reproduction from an original. When I see a listing on eBay for an original matching one in our collection, I am moved to write the seller that there can only be one original. The company also developed techniques for printing on cotton, vinyl and a type of velvet material, unique to the offset lithography field.

Many internationally recognized, award-winning artists became closely associated with DAC.

Some of the most popular included Robert W. Wood (known for his Autumn scenes), Anton Pieck, whose illustrations of magical scenes capture a view of traditional Dutch city life, Florence Kroger (whom as children we often visited for tea in Nyack), Rico Tomaso, Bennett Bradbury, Henk Bos, Walter Brightwell, Guy Coheleach, Bouvier De Cachard, Peter Haywood, Jack Laycox, Maurice Legendre, and “Big Eye” style painters such as Margaret Keane and George Buckett. August Albo painted the iconic Free As The Wind, which I titled when I was 13. DAC also had the rights to reproduce old masters such as Rembrandt and van Gogh.

The company made artwork for premiums, promotions and incentives and they offered a variety of art-related products including pictures for Jigsaw puzzles. Impress Graphics was a division of DAC as was Design-R-Crafts in Fort Worth, TX, manufacturing craft kits. In 1970 CBS Broadcasting made an offer to buy the company but Serine convinced Donald that the time wasn’t right. In 1984; however, suffering with heart failure, he was ready to retire. Donald Bonnist passed away in 1986 at his home in Mamaroneck at the age of 78.

Our father left a legacy and such a wonderful gift.

With every painting I touch I feel my father, while the greatest reward comes from putting an original painting in the hands of a grateful person who has fallen in love with the copy.

We receive heart-felt testimonials from people who can’t imagine that they now own the original of the print they grew up with.

The company continued to change hands until its physical presence ceased to exist. For more information and to view the collection and read testimonials, please visit Donald-Art.com. If you are local, we would love to meet you and hand deliver your purchase.

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Art, Art History, Donald Art Company, Donald Art Company Collection, Donald Bonnist, Vivien Bonnist Cord

ARC Stages Celebrates its Tenth Year Presenting the Gift of Theater

November 9, 2022 by Michael Gold

In Arc Stages She Loves Me: Jennifer Silverman and Stacey Bone-Gleason

Name a ten-year-old who doesn’t ask for presents for their birthday but wants to give you a gift instead.

We found one.

ARC Stages, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is eager to offer us the gift of theater.

Tony Award winner Ali Stroker, a Briarcliff resident, who acted in the play Downstairs, on the ARC stage in September to kick off the anniversary year for the company, said, “ARC stages is so essential. They’re not just providing theater for the community. They give to these kids. It’s special to have a place where they can grow and develop.”

Stroker’s husband, David Perlow, who directed Downstairs, explained that ARC Stages “is responsible for a whole generation of theater.”

Noah Zachary, also in Downstairs, said, “I’m from Long Island. We didn’t have community theater. I would have lived here (the theater).”

ARC Stages has three programs: The Educational Stage, including a summer program, called Summer Stage; Community Stage, which puts on productions using non-professional actors living in the region; and Next Stage, which presents professional shows, providing “quality theater in your backyard,” said Adam Cohen, executive artistic director for ARC, and a Pleasantville resident.

In The Mountaintop: Gabriel Lawrence and Shavonna Banks

The Educational Stage offers acting classes for children from kindergarten to 12th grade, as well as adults. It recently expanded the program to provide pre-school children, from as young as ten months old, with music, theater, and storytelling sessions. About 130 children in total are enrolled.

“Last summer was our largest camp yet,” Cohen said. “We care about the art we’re creating with the kids. We stress kindness, fun, and creative expression.”

The Community Stage puts on three shows each year. In November, ARC will be presenting She Loves Me, a romantic comedy musical, and in April 2023, Peter and the Starcatcher which explores Peter Pan’s origins.

“The idea is that anyone who wants to come in can audition. The talent around here is amazing,” Cohen said.

Next Stage, the professional actors’ arm, puts on two shows a year, in October and February, which generally run for three or four weeks. Auditions are conducted in New York City.

“We’re doing shows that aren’t done all the time, stories that are worth telling, to spark conversations about social change and cultural change,” Cohen said.

“A lot of people we’ve had here have Broadway credits,” he explained. “We have actors who’ve done major tours and off-Broadway too.”

Several Broadway actors have taught classes at ARC, including Tony award winner Joanna Gleason, who played the baker’s wife in the original production of Into the Woods. Gleason sits on ARC Stages’ industry advisory board, as does Broadway, film, and TV veteran Vanessa Williams, who once starred in Desperate Housewives and graduated from Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua.

Downstairs by Theresa Rebeck, a one-night event ARC put on to commemorate its tenth year, focuses on a man living in his sister’s basement, who is unwanted by the sister’s husband. Zachary played the brother, Stroker the sister and Perlow the difficult husband.

The play starts on a comic note, with Zachary’s character, named Teddy, knocking around in his sloppy basement lair, cluttered with tools, old paint cans, and tubs full of clothes, and pouring water and coffee creamer in his cereal. Conflict flares immediately when Stroker’s character, named Irene, asks him when he’s leaving. There’s a lot of tortured family history too.

In the small ARC space (74 seats), theatergoers can observe at close range the way the actors physically transform themselves. Perlow, so friendly in conversation before the show, became on stage a lumbering giant with barely contained anger and massive potential for violence in his shoulders.

“This is such a great way to do theater,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t matter where you sit.”

The first official show of Next Stage’s season was The Great Leap, which ran from September 30th to mid-October. Before one October show, County Legislator Margaret Cunzio proclaimed on stage that October 10th would be “ARC Stages Day in Westchester.”

The Great Leap concerns a fictional Chinese American basketball player named Manford, who is a loudmouth, but with the skills to back it up. He wins a spot on an American team that goes to China to play an exhibition game with the Chinese team in 1989, during the Tiananmen Square protests for democracy.

Manford’s American coach, born in the Bronx, immediately insults the Chinese coach to get under his skin and emphasizes aggressive play, while his Chinese counterpart finds himself fearfully paralyzed in going against the wishes of a powerful, vengeful bureaucracy directed by the country’s leader.

The play is funny and touching, with multiple dramatic entanglements. Political and cultural conflict abound (and rebound too).

ARC Stages carries the theatrical spirit way beyond Broadway. This 10-year-old offers electric inspiration to anyone who walks in the door.

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Adam Cohen, Arc Stages, Community Stage, Next Stage, Tenth Anniversary, The Educational Stage, theater

Making a Difference & How Words of Positivity Keep Stealing Hearts

November 9, 2022 by Irene Unger

‘The Sign Lady’ at the Briarcliff Congregational Church

Joan Austin keeps the signs of inspiration coming to an appreciative community–and beyond.

Across from Briarcliff Manor’s Law Park–home of our town’s pool, tennis courts, pavilion, ball fields, and playground–is the Briarcliff Congregational Church (BCC) Parish House. This small, unassuming building sits in one of the busiest intersections in Briarcliff. However, there is a constantly changing roadside sign in front of the building which makes getting stuck sitting at the light on the corner of Pleasantville and South State Roads a source of enjoyment and inspiration for many.

Personally, throughout my 12 years living in Briarcliff, the BCC sign has been a source of anticipation for me, as I never know what to expect as I drive by. Certain messages have made me laugh out loud like, “Procrastinators Unite! Let’s Have a Meeting. Maybe Next Year?” and “Gardening Is Cheaper Than Therapy And You Get Tomatoes.” Others have been a source of reflection on my own personal challenges such as, “Just Because Someone Carries It Well Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Heavy” and “Life Is Too Short To Wear Uncomfortable Shoes.” Then there are the messages that lead to family discussions over dinner including, “Compassion May Help When Justice Fails” and “Banning Books? Not a Single Child Has Died From A Mass Reading.” Finally, there are the messages that make me feel proud to live in a town that celebrates acceptance. For example, “Juneteenth, America’s second Independence Day” and “Every Human Encounter Is A Meeting of Equals.”

For years, I often would let my imagination wander when I pictured how the messages are determined. Perhaps it is the Pastor, a custodian, or a committee of church members. However, I wondered if knowing more would take away the mysticism of this beloved sign. It was this reason I would always put finding out on the backburner. Only recently was I finally ready to see how the wider Briarcliff Community felt about the sign, and while both hesitant and excited, I also felt ready to identify the creator and how the messages were devised.

When I asked the Briarcliff Community for thoughts about this sign, the reaction was overwhelmingly helpful and encouraging. I received both public and private messages on social media about how much the sign and its messages mean to our residents. Community residents such as Mei Morris, shared, “I’m thrilled the author of these witty signs is finally being recognized! The humor, humanity, humility, and inclusivity that generally accompany the messaging are inspiring and uplifting.” Robyn Wild, Briarcliff resident, and member of the BCC, perfectly summed up the messages saying, “I love the quotes on the sign for their humor, history, Christian faith, subtle social commentary, and nuggets to ponder.” I learned quickly that many are just as obsessed with the changing messages as I am, and there are others just as interested to know more about the face behind the sign. Senajda Celaj captured this feeling when she said, “I always wondered who the witty individual was posting them for our community’s enjoyment.”

So, who exactly does create these messages and maintain the sign? The Briarcliff Community Church website states, various people have overseen the signs over the years, and each has done it in their own unique way, since 2011, Joan Austin is the sign lady.

I had the pleasure of spending an hour with “the sign lady” both interviewing, as well as heading to the church basement to see where the letters are kept, how she creates the weekly signs, and then finally watching her change the sign. The ubiquitous town curiosity is now solved.

Joan Austin has lived in Briarcliff since 1975 and while there was a time she was frequently recognized anywhere in town, as a school board member for 18 years, and wife of the village Mayor, she is now known by a smaller group and remains more mysterious. Joan is a historian with two degrees in history and an avid lifelong reader. She uses those passions as her springboard to inspire the weekly messages saying they come from, “something I think of, or see, something inspirational. I like to put up ones that are kind of funny, ones that have a spiritual aspect, but not specifically Christian, and I comment very carefully on current events, I don’t want this to be political.”

Joan changes the sign every Monday morning around 11:30 a.m. and maps out her plan weeks in advance. When I asked her if it was time consuming, she said, “from the time I leave home to the time I get back, it’s maybe 45 minutes.” In terms of planning what she is going to use, Joan explained her process of finding and saving ideas just about anywhere explaining: “When I come across something, I write it on a slip of paper, and then I put it on the computer. I have 68 pages of possible quotes, some of which will never be used!”

Joan also explained the times, “I will break that schedule to make sure the sign reflects a current event. For instance, in September, when Queen Elizabeth died.” Additionally, Joan will break her Monday schedule when tragedy occurs. Recently, she made sure to express the church and community were there with the people of Buffalo, and that we would stand by Ukraine. These sentiments are very powerful and have even spread around the world. Joan explained a very moving story sharing, “When the attack on the Muslim Community in New Zealand occurred, I posted a sign condemning it, and I later heard that a Muslim person in the area took a picture of it and sent it to the Middle East where it was seen by many.”

Joan remembers the message the historian in her posted after the attacks in Paris in the fall of 2015. She quoted Thomas Jefferson’s statement that “All men have two countries, their own and France.” She vividly remembers a community member stopping her and telling her “That it brought them to tears as they drove by.”

It seems that 2015 was quite a viral year for the roadside sign when during the 2015 World Series, the sign read, “God doesn’t take sides. The sign lady does. Let’s go Mets” was passed around from coast to coast and had an astounding 41,023 views on Facebook! Numerous Briarcliff residents shared memories of this specific message, including Bob Kilman who remembered, “it made me smile every time I passed.”

Finally, I asked Joan if she knows she is a local mysterious celebrity, she replied, “No, I didn’t. I wasn’t aware that the sign was so widely noticed or discussed. It’s gratifying to hear that the sign fosters community, something I so cherish about Briarcliff.” Additionally, community residents shared that the changing message is a source of personal reflection, or even better, driving discussions. Rebecca Bell, mother of Briarcliff High School sophomore, Abigail Bell shared how messages such as’ “Tweet others how you want to be tweeted” and “Before you judge someone make sure that your perfect” are examples of “thought-provoking conversation starters with my teenage daughter, as we are driving past.” A few residents remember telling their teenagers to look up from their phones to read and think about the message, “Discover a whole new world. Put down your phone.”

The overwhelming feelings of our town solidified how many people would appreciate knowing more, because as resident Erica Ben-Zvi so perfectly stated, “the signs make me feel proud to live in Briarcliff, they give such a strong sense of community and sometimes they’re so philosophical and they leave me on Pleasantville Road thinking profoundly.” Finally, Robin Rabinowe had the best idea saying, “We should get national coverage for this!” I couldn’t agree more, and now I am on to my next step in making sure Joan Austin’s story makes her more than just our community’s no longer a secret “local celebrity.”

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Briarcliff Congregational Church, inspiration, Joan Austin, motivation

Michael Shapiro’s VOICES Premieres, a Requiem Honoring Victims of the Holocaust

November 9, 2022 by Stacey Pfeffer

More than 20 years ago, longtime Chappaqua resident Michael Shapiro found himself thumbing through a poetry compilation about the Holocaust written from the perspective of Jews in countries such as Greece, Italy and France at at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. The compilation, And The World Stood Silent: Sephardic Poetry of the Holocaust, chronicles the life of nearly 160,000 Sephardic Jews exiled from Spain in 1492 and who ultimately perished in the Holocaust.

At the time, Shapiro’s work focused primarily on curating concerts featuring music of Jews who had fled the Holocaust and emigrated to Hollywood such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold who scored several films most notably The Adventures of Robin Hood. Shapiro also organized concerts featuring music from composers who had lived in Teresienstadt, a ghetto in Czechoslovakia–a hotbed of musical creativity with composers such as Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann residing there.

Shapiro lost about 75 members of his own family among the six million Eastern European Jews massacred during the Holocaust. He yearned for the chance to immerse himself in how the Holocaust impacted Jews in the countries included in the poetry compilation and to share his own family history. Shapiro was immediately moved by the literature. “The poetry hit me completely. It was so powerful,” recalls Shapiro. A few years ago, conductor Deborah Simpkin King of Ember Choral Arts, inspired him to write the 60-minute plus work and is conducting Shapiro’s piece, which took him just seven months to write. “It flew out of me,” explains Shapiro. Shapiro was intentional in having the piece be a requiem. “Nothing gets to people like the sound of a chorus with an orchestra,” he noted.

Shapiro has written more than 100 works for orchestral, theatrical, film, chamber, choral and vocal forces throughout his career. His works have been performed by many of the greatest orchestras and performers in North America and Europe and for years he served as the conductor of the Chappaqua Orchestra. His music has been played on BBC, National Public Radio, SiriusXM and is available on major platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.

Shapiro has always been interested in exploring themes such as prejudice and racial divisiveness in his music. In fact, one of Shapiro’s most well-known pieces is the score from Frankenstein which has been performed more than 50 times internationally. “I think I was attracted to Frankenstein because I was interested in the way the monster was depicted and treated as the other.”

Shapiro hopes his “Voices of the Holocaust” concerts “give a voice to people who no longer have a voice.” While the Nazis murdered six million Jews, they also targeted other groups such as Roma (gypsies), homosexuals and people with disabilities. This same hatred is happening today, Shapiro is quick to point out. He felt he had to write the piece now, especially with the number of Holocaust survivors dwindling each year to 300,000-350,000 survivors in 2022 according to the nonprofit Holocaust group, Claims Conference.

The premiere of the piece took place at Temple Shaaray Tefila on November 9th and at Manhattan’s famed Central Synagogue on November 10th. The timing was purposely chosen to coincide with the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, ‘The Night of Broken Glass’, when Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues and homes were destroyed by the Nazis in Germany and in Nazi occupied territories in Austria and Czechoslovakia. In the two-day spree of massive violence against the Jews, 30,000 Jewish males were arrested and sent to prisons or concentration camps.

The premiere at Central Synagogue also included a Q & A session with Paul Shaffer, the former musical director and band leader of Late Night with David Letterman. It also featured tenor soloist Daniel Mutlu, the Senior Cantor of Central Synagogue and the American Modern Ensemble. “Mutlu has a phenomenal voice. He really is one of the greatest cantors in the country,” exclaims Shapiro.

On the Horizon

The concert will also debut at the Reagan Library in California performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and conducted by Grant Gershon. The LA performance will coincide with the Auschwitz exhibition at the library for ten months starting this spring. The moving exhibition originally was showcased at the Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in downtown New York City. Visit MichaelShapiro.com.

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Auschwitz, concerts, holocaust, Kristallnacht, Michael Shapiro, Voices of the Holocaust

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