Letter to Warsaw

In January, 2003, MOR Artistic Director Mina Miller approached me about writing a song-cycle based on six unpublished texts by the Polish cabaret artist Pola Braun. These texts were composed while Braun was incarcerated in the Warsaw ghetto and in the concentration camp Majdanek. They were originally set to music that no longer exists. I was inspired by these poems, and their descriptions of a woman?s loss of freedom and her home. That?s how it all began. I am so fortunate to have had such incredible texts to set.