After the catastrophe of the Second World War and the Holocaust, Europe was broken. Its cities in ruins, and the souls of its survivors irrevocably altered.

What art could arise from this rubble? Can anything of the old world be salvaged?

Forest Collective explores the incredible music and poetry birthed from the immediate aftermath of these horrors - the so-called Trȕmmerliteratur - and its long artistic shadows cast through the 20th and 21st centuries. 

The defiant poetry of holocaust survivor Paul Celan, and the bitter anguish of returned conscript Wolfgang Borchert’s play The Man Outside, are combined with music from 20th century masters Aribert Reimann, Isabel Mundry and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Yet bastions of the old world remain among the rubble – the sweet lyricism of Jewish-German composer Franz Schrecker, whose works were branded ‘degenerate’ by the regime. Likewise, pillars of high German culture, like Robert Schumann’s lieder settings of Heinrich Heine (who was himself Jewish), stand out as bittersweet reminders of a romanticism, now gone.

Forest Collective’s bold vision and virtuosity brings this world to life in a one-night-only performance that shines a light of courage into dark places.

"There is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German."  - Paul Celan.

The performance features Aleise Bright (soprano), Danaȅ Killian (piano), Kim Tan (flutes), and Daniel Szesiong Todd (spoken word), and the full Forest Collective ensemble, led by conductor Evan J Lawson.