The Colburn School of Performing Arts - Los Angeles

                                "the arts give life meaning under the most dreadful of circumstances." 
     
           - Herbert Zipper, stalwart Viennese conductor who formed a secret orchestra in a Nazi concentration camp and later took concerts to America's inner-city schools. 





COLBURN 100, A Season Celebrating Richard D. Colburn's Centenary. 




THE COLBURN SCHOOL, Zipper Hall, yesterday's setting for two Operas; THE SECRET KINGDOM, by Ernst Krenek, and THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS, by Viktor Ullmann with The Colburn Orchestra and The Domingo-Thornton Young Artists of LA Opera conducted by James Conlon, Richard Seaver Music Director of LA OPERA.


The voices, sublime, all of them standouts, excellent, brilliant. The costumes, black and white, pleated, pointed, flowing, colorful red, yellow slashed green, striking, grabbed my eyes and held them. The conducting, precise, in total command. The audience, spellbound and astonished and for me, grateful at the same time. The composers, masters. Ernst Krenek, (1900-1991) presents a fairy tale with a riddle, and takes us into nature to unfold it. Viktor Ullmann, (1898-1944) exhibits a chilling work written in the Terezin concentration camp where he "took an active part in the musical life which flourished there amid the appalling conditions." This work was suppressed by the Nazi regime, and I am fortunate to have been in the audience. I am fortunate through the music to experience scenes of my own childhood, the electric blue of the morning glories, the blazing orange of Mother's Zinnias, and the delight in being out of doors in the open air watching blades of grass, cars go by, the postman on the street, the direct contrast to the horrors that occurred only few years before. I am fortunate to capture, through music, over the years, Viktor Ullmann's feeling for life.


This is a realized dream of conductor James Conlon and Colburn President and CEO Sel Kardan, to raise public consciousness to these suppressed composers work. 


THE COLBURN SCHOOL for the performing arts is the example of excellence in every way. Whether you are a connoisseur of music, dance or drama. Whether you can pay or whether you need to go free, go, experience world class performing arts and how they do, in fact, give life meaning.




http://www.colburnschool.edu/