Rabbi Caplan Collection of Percy Haid recordings
Creator(s)
- Percy Haid (Composer)
Biographical History
Percy Haid, b. Riga, Latvia 1913-d. Chicago 1977. Composer and musician active in the Kovno ghetto. Haid performed and arranged music for the Ghetto Orchestra, and played piano and accordion at the ghetto's "coffee house," the Cafe Monika. His original song "Mamele" (The Old Mother), written in the wake of a Kinderaktion, became widely known in Kovno and other locales; his symphonic poem, Fantasie in Gelb (Fantasy in Yellow), sketched out in Kovno and reworked in Dachau, was broadcast over German radio soon after liberation. Haid met his future wife Sonja Pessin while in Dachau; they arrived in the US in 1947 and settled in Chicago, where Haid relaunched his musical career. He is perhaps best known as the composer of the hit song "I Remember When," recorded by Eddie Fisher in 1952.
Scope and Content
Disc 1: "Fantasy in Yellow" by Percy Haid, recorded at Temple Anshe Sholom, Olympia Fields IL, April 23, 2017. The CD was home-recorded at a memorial event during which Haid's "Fantasie in Gelb" was performed in an arrangement for string orchestra by Linda Veleckis Nussbaum. The event had been arranged by Rabbi Paul Caplan of Temple Anshe Sholom with the cooperation of Haid's children, Max and Joseph. Discs 2 (DVD video) and 3: "Yom HaShoah: A Community Observance" Yom Hashoah service recorded at Temple Anshe Shalom, Olympia Fields IL, April 23, 2017. The video documentation was edited by Joseph Haid's son, Sebastian.
Note(s)
Refer to Recorded Sound files for Rabbi Caplan's draft "libretto" for the event (drawn from Sonja Haid's memoir). For more information, refer to: Percy Haid and Sonja Haid Papers https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn501022 Sonja Haid's oral testimony https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/vha5583 Sonja Haid-Greene "Between life and death: my memoirs" (2010)
Genre
- Memorial service programs.
- Recorded Sound
- Music.