Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers
James Conlon, Artistic Director
Rediscovering Suppressed Musical Treasures of the Twentieth Century
El Lissitzky, Proun 19D (detail)
Led by Artistic Director James Conlon, the Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers is a program at the Colburn School that encourages greater awareness and more frequent performances of music by composers whose careers and lives were tragically cut short by the Nazi regime.
Through performances in Southern California and around the world, original video series, classes, competitions, symposia, recordings, and more, Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers brings well-deserved attention to composers whose names and works were very nearly eliminated from history.
Led by Artistic Director James Conlon, Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers is a program at the Colburn School that encourages greater awareness and more frequent performances of music by composers whose careers and lives were tragically cut short by the Nazi regime.
MusicRestored.org features the full content from the former OREL Foundation website. The Colburn School is honored to continue maintaining and expanding this valuable resource, building on its important work to educate students, performers, and the public about the enduring legacy of these composers.
Recovering a Musical Heritage: The Music Suppressed by the Third Reich
By James Conlon
“Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate…Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?” – Siegfried Sassoon
After 1945, those who performed, wrote or taught classical music worked in a culture scarred by omissions. These were not of their making, but were part of the legacy of atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. With its racist ideology and systematic suppression particularly, although not exclusively, of Jewish musicians, artists and writers, the Third Reich silenced two generations of composers and, with them, an entire musical heritage. Many, who were murdered in concentration camps, and others, whose freedom and productivity were curtailed, were fated to be forgotten after the war. Their music seemed to have passed with them, lost in endless silence…
Our History
Inspired by LA Opera’s groundbreaking Recovered Voices project, the initiative was established at Colburn in 2013 with the support of Los Angeles philanthropist Marilyn Ziering. Originally named the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, in 2025, the program was renamed Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers in recognition of its expanded presence and launch of the website with assets acquired from the OREL Foundation, one of the world’s most valued web sites on music suppressed by the Nazis.
Our History
Inspired by LA Opera’s groundbreaking Recovered Voices project, the initiative was established at Colburn in 2013 with the support of Los Angeles philanthropist Marilyn Ziering. Originally named the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, in 2025, the program was renamed Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers in recognition of its expanded presence and launch of the website with assets acquired from the OREL Foundation, one of the world’s most valued web sites on music suppressed by the Nazis.
Schulhoff and More
This original four-part online series delves into the life and music of Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942), a fascinating, prolific, and multi-faceted composer whose works were banned during the years of the Nazi regime in Europe.
The music of Erwin Schulhoff is given stirring performances by James Conlon and brilliant young players from The Colburn School on this new release from the Delos label.
Rediscovering Operetta — and Overcoming the Nazi Shadow
“English and American composers also created works dealing with the new situation in Germany. One of them was Ivor Novello, whose The Dancing Years (1939) tells the story of a Jewish operetta composer in Vienna who is arrested by the Nazis, whose music is forbidden from one day to the next and who escapes deportation and death only at the very last minute.”
—Dr. Kevin Clarke
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Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers at the Colburn School,
200 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90012 | 213-621-2200