Niv Ashkenazi; Photo courtesy Ricki Quinn Celebrating instruments rescued from the Holocaust and lovingly restored by Avshalom and Amnon Weinstein at their shop in Tel Aviv, the multi-format Violins of Hope project was to take place at concert venues, synagogues and the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust in March and April. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the event’s cancellation, and it is now scheduled to take place in January and February 2021.
In the meantime, violinist Niv Ashkenazi, who was scheduled to headline several concerts in the program, will perform via Facebook Live on April 17 at 4 p.m., using the violin he has on loan from the Weinsteins.
“It’s a very fine instrument, early 1900s, perhaps from Yugoslavia. The owner survived and made it to America,” Ashkenazi said. “One of the premises of Violins of Hope is to allow silent voices to be heard again. I wanted to make sure that this violin would never be silenced again.”
A Los Angeles native and son of Israeli parents, Juilliard graduate Ashkenazi will perform selections from his new album “Niv Ashkenazi: Violins of Hope,” recorded earlier this year at the Soraya.
“The album is all music by people who were affected by the Holocaust, or prominent Jewish works,” Ashkenazi noted. “We have Simon Wax, who was the concert master of the orchestra in Birkenau, ‘Serenade’ by Robert Dauber, who died at 23 in Dachau, and of course ‘Schindler’s List.’”
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