Orinoco Sketches

PROGRAM NOTE

Orinoco Sketches was written in 2011 for the LA Philharmonic as a memorial for my paternal grandmother, Hannelore Kahane (née Schaefer), who died in May of 2010 at the age of 89. Lore, as she was known to my family, fled Germany in January of 1939 on the SS Orinoco, the last ship to cross the Atlantic before the ill-fated St. Louis, which was famously turned away from all ports. Some nine months later—her family having been denied entry into the United States while they waited in Havana for their lottery number to be called— my grandmother settled in Los Angeles, where both my father and I were born. In her final years, amidst a courageous battle against multiple cancers, my grandmother, working on a bright orange iMac, translated from German to English the diaries she'd kept as a teenager. The last time that I saw her, I asked Lore for permission to email myself those diaries, which became the initial impulse for the piece you're hearing this evening. In today's political climate, I believe little else need be said about this brief song cycle, suffice it to say that I would not be here to perform it had my grandmother not been allowed into this country. This week's performances mark the world premiere of a newly orchestrated version of the piece, commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

— Gabriel Kahane, 2016

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