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Letter to Kamilla: Music in Jewish Memory

Mosaic Voices move and thrill on CD, online and – soon – in concert

This year is proving to be a busy and fruitful one for Mosaic Voices. Members of the resident choral group of New West End Synagogue have built on the success of the beautifully made and wonderfully atmospheric music videos they made during lockdown to release an album, the launch of which will be celebrated at a concert in the stunning surrounds of NWE Synagogue on Sunday 20 March.

The album’s title, Letter to Kamilla: Music in Jewish Memory, hints at the deeply moving personal significance for Michael Etherton, the group’s founder and musical director. Kamilla Breuer was a member of the Jewish community in Vienna, which was all but destroyed by the Nazis. She wrote a moving farewell letter to her daughter on the eve of her deportation to Theresienstadt in July 1942, which forms the lyrics for the similarly titled track ‘Letter from Kamilla’ and inspired the video.

Kamilla was murdered with her husband and sister in Auschwitz in 1944 and, sadly, she never knew that her final letter reached her daughter who, with her husband, had managed to get to the UK, where they settled in Derbyshire. Michael is Kamilla’s great-grandson and, 80 years later, it has inspired him to “write back to her in the form of an album of Jewish songs” for Mosaic Voices.

The group’s stunning compositions and arrangements of liturgical music are provided by multitalented composer Benjamin Till, who also sings baritone in Mosaic Voices. It was during lockdown that Michael showed the letter to Benjamin. This led to the imaginative idea of honouring the original German text of the letter by setting it to music, while it is interpreted on film by deaf actor Tina Kelberman in sign language, with discreet onscreen English subtitles. Tina’s performance as Kamilla is tender and moving in the heart-rendingly beautiful film, shot in the basement of the NWE Synagogue, reimagined as Michael’s great-grandmother’s Vienna home.

As world attention is on the plight of Ukraine, where its citizens seek shelter from air raids in basements and underground stations and women and children flee the country as refugees, the resonances for now are all too clear.

The other members of Mosaic Voices are counter-tenor Karl Gietzmann, tenor Miles d’Cruz and bass Dickon Gough, who meld together with Benjamin and Michael to produce their exquisitely varied and richly textured sound.

“As both composer and filmmaker,” explains Benjamin of the group’s creative process, “I’m most happy when the two are the same thing. I’ve always known that visuals are really important when promoting music. In the very early days of Covid, I put montages of photographs together to accompany music the choir had already recorded. Then, as rules began to be relaxed, we were able to move into making films.”

The films are rather interesting because they chart the Covid period. Some are outdoors, because for a time being indoors was forbidden, while some of the indoor videos feature the group standing two metres apart. Some were shot in the very hot summer of 2020, others in the freezing cold of early 2021. “We always found ways to make the films without breaking rules, but this required a lot of creativity.”

Budget was also a factor when filming. “The most creativity goes into filming on a shoe-string,” admits Benjamin. “We paid a young film maker, Dan Daniel, to shoot some of the films, and fundraised to get enough money to work with a professional cameraman, Keith Jacobsen, on three more. I had to teach myself to edit, because we could never have afforded an editor. I also started to shoot the films when we couldn’t afford a cameraman. Michael and I did most of the work together – finding and making the props, and travelling to unusual locations together, including the Isle of Grain in Kent and Merthyr Tydfil in Wales.”

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Mosaic Voices' latest video to be taken from the album, is Benjamin’s new setting of ‘Ein Keloheinu’, a song sung to end a synagogue service, usually to a rather repetitive tune. Benjamin’s plangent melody, gloriously accompanied by Miles as soloist, within the beautiful but now disused Coventry Synagogue (round the corner from which Benjamin’s grandparents ran a shop), makes this a very special addition to the album. For tantalising tasters of the spirited and spiritual tracks from the album, watch the video below, an enticing trailer for the live concert on Sunday 20 March.

“We want Kamilla to know that although she, her husband and sister Minka lost their lives in the Holocaust, all her children survived and lived successful and happy lives in Britain, as proud Jewish people,” Michael says of how his great-grandmother’s letter has affected and inspired him. “Hitler’s mission failed. The other tracks that we have chosen to record celebrate the diversity, mysticism and beauty of the music that Jewish people have brought to the world over time.”

By Judi Herman

Header photo: Kamilla Breuer (right) and her sister Minka, courtesy of Michael Etherton/Mosaic Voices

Letter to Kamilla by Mosaic Voices is out now on Chandos Records and available digitally and on CD (with a detailed booklet) via mosaicvoices.co.uk. Mosaic Voices play Sunday 20 March, 6pm, £10, at New West End Synagogue, W2 4JT. Book tickets at eventbrite.co.uk.