Photo credit: O’Neil Arnold
Although many of the events for Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers take place on the Colburn School campus or around Los Angeles, throughout its history, Artistic Director James Conlon has been sharing the music of suppressed composers through lectures and performances around the world so the memory and knowledge of them and their work will live on with the next generations across the globe.
Program Director Adam Millstein also brings the message of Music Restored to other communities and students. This year, he and pianist Dominic Cheli were artists in residences for String Theory. Founded in 2009 by pianist Gloria Chien, String Theory presents a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Millstein and Cheli dedicated three days to teaching master classes and performing concerts to nearly 1,000 students.
“We played music by well-established composers like Mozart blended with Music Restored composers like Schulhoff and Korngold. It was inspiring to see the excitement from so many of the students of all ages! In between all of our pieces, we engaged with the students giving them history lessons and fielding questions,” said Cheli.
They also were interviewed about the Music Restored initiative for a local classical radio station.
“Work like this is so important for the mission of Music Restored because it exposes the next generation to this music and mission,” added Cheli.
Also, last year, Music Restored and Millstein had the opportunity to collaborate with the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky along with Tomer Zvulun, general and artistic director of the Atlanta Opera, in reviving Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung (The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobedience of Death) in conjunction with the release of Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis, a graphic novel adaption of the opera. This rendition premiered in January 2025.
Viktor Ullmann wrote the opera as an adaption on a libretto by Peter Kien while both men were imprisoned in Theresienstadt—the concentration camp now known as Terezín—in the Czech Republic. According to historical reports, prisoners were permitted a limited cultural life, including concerts, stage plays, and literary readings, which were then used by the Reich as propaganda. In this recent interpretation, a futuristic Atlantis never sank; rather it’s become a techno-totalitarian superpower under Emperor Overall, who declares war on everybody.
Not only did the live performance incorporate scenes from the graphic novel projected onto a screen, the production included a photo of a violinist Paul Kling, who served as Louisville Orchestra’s concertmaster in the 1950s, but who also played in rehearsals of Der Kaiser a decade earlier as a prisoner in Theresienstadt.
“[The opera was] very dedicated to the graphic novel and the graphic novel was very dedicated to the original vision,” said Millstein. “It looks back toward the 20th century but also forward to the 21st century.”
Millstein hopes Music Restored will be able to stage the opera again in the future.