"Stitching History From the Holocaust"Hear the world premieres of five new works at “Chamber Music @ AEIVA” Thursday, Feb. 21, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Presented in collaboration by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music and the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts with Birmingham Art Music Alliance, “Chamber Music @ AEIVA” connects chamber music with the visual arts. Chamber Music @ AEIVA series is now in its fifth year.
The works are from composers Holland Hopson, Kenneth Kuhn, Eric Mobley, Brian Moon and Tom Reiner, from the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. Performing musicians include UAB Department of Music faculty and members of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, including
Sarah Dennis and Pei-Ju Wu, violins; Zak Enikeev, viola; Laura Usiskin, cello; and Chris Steele, piano.
The music has been inspired by and relates to the two AEIVA current exhibits “Stitching History From the Holocaust” and “Irene Grau: Incohèrent Walk.” Gallery viewing and a reception are at 5 p.m., and the concert is at 5:30 p.m. in the AEIVA, 1221 10th Ave. South. The event is free and open to the public.
A performance by Grau is documented in the exhibition “Irene Grau: Incohérent Walk.” During this performance, the artist, based in Valencia, Spain, walked through the green spaces of Santiago de Compostela dressed in green clothes carrying a green painting. Grau’s AEIVA exhibition is a conceptual “retelling” of her performance, and utilizes audio, text, paint, fabric and photography to discuss contemporary issues regarding traditional landscape painting.
Hedy Strnad, a talented dressmaker in Prague in the 1930s, was not able to escape Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. However, some of her fashion designs did. Eight of her sketches, along with the garments they inspired, are the focus of “Stitching History From the Holocaust,” an original exhibit created by and on loan from Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The exhibition is on display at AEIVA and presented by the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center.