tmf commissions • furthering our unique mission

Cover of the TMF CD recording of André Previn's first TMF commission: Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet.

ongoing commissions

TMF has commissioned more than forty new works inspired by the Terezín artists and story. In addition to our regular ongoing commissions, we have two special commissions programs:

liberarte

In 2015, we launched our acclaimed LiberArte project, honoring the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps and the end of WWII. TMF executive Director Mark Ludwig commissioned eighty-two poems about freedom from sixty-three of the world's most renowned poets--Richard Blanco, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Pinsky, and others—and commissioned significant emerging composers to set these works to music. The LiberArte poetry anthology, Liberation, is published by Beacon Press.

krasa-schaechter

The Krasa-Schaechter Fund awards commissions to young Czech and American composers in honor of survivor Edgar Krasa and in memory of Raphael Schaechter, who directed the infamous Terezín Verdi Requiem performances of 1943.This fund is a living memorial and tribute to this inspiring chapter of musical resistance. The Advisory Board for the Krasa-Schaecter Fund includes Anthony Fogg, Christopher Hogwood, and Robert Spano, and is chaired by Mark Ludwig. Recent and upcoming projects supported by the Krasa-Schaechter Commission Fund include awarding commissions to composers Vit Zouhar and Stephen Feigenbaum (Yale, class of 2011).

“With Verdi’s Requiem, we could sing to the Nazis what we were not allowed to say in Terezín.”
—Edgar Krasa.