Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers
About
MusicRestored.org
Events and Projects
Impact
About
Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers is a unique Colburn resource that encourages greater awareness and more frequent performances of music by composers whose careers and lives were tragically cut short by the Nazi regime in Europe.
James Conlon, Artistic Director of Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers, has long championed works by these composers and by so doing has drawn deserved attention to composers whose names and works had very nearly been eliminated from history.
Inspired by LA Opera’s groundbreaking Recovered Voices project, and with the support of Los Angeles philanthropist Marilyn Ziering, the Colburn School and James Conlon established the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices in 2013. The program was renamed Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers in 2025, reflecting the program’s growing scope and Colburn’s ongoing commitment to this important work.
MusicRestored.org
In tandem with the renaming of the program, Colburn launched MusicRestored.org, a site that includes complete content from the former OREL Foundation website, one of the world’s most valued online resources on the topic of music suppressed by the Nazis. It also serves as a home for the digital and performance content produced by Music Restored, including multimedia online series, album releases, livestreams, recorded performance content, documentaries, and live performances and lectures around the world.
Support
Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers supports educational opportunities, programmatic representation in world-class performances, and competitions that inspire young musicians to not only learn about the artists but to return to their music throughout their career. This important work needs your support. Please make a gift to ensure the activities of Maestro Conlon and the many interested musicians and audience members can continue undoing the injustice that was done.
Music Restored is made possible through the generous support of Marilyn Ziering, the Emma and Adam Zhu Foundation, and many individual philanthropists. Music Restored is grateful to Robert Elias for many years of meaningful contributions and to the philanthropists who believe in this vital work.
2025-26 Events
NOV 6 · Adam Millstein, Violin and Dominic Cheli, Piano
Violinist Adam Millstein and pianist Dominic Cheli performs works by innovative Czech composers who profoundly impacted the trajectory of 20th-century music.
MARTINŮ Sonatina for Violin and Piano, H. 262
KAPRÁLOVÁ Elegy
SMETANA From My Homeland, Op. 128
SCHULHOFF Sonata for Solo Violin
MARTINŮ Violin Sonata No. 2
MARCH 7 · Exploring Czech Masterworks
James Conlon, one of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, leads the Music Restored Ensemble in a love letter to Bohemian melodies.
DVORAK Nocturne in B Major
KAPRALOVA Partita for Piano and Strings
MARTINU Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano, and Timpani
2024-25 Events
SEPT 17 · ARC Ensemble
Canada’s Grammy-nominated ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory), a group dedicated to the recovery of suppressed and lost 20th-century music, performs a program of rarely-heard works for clarinet, piano, and strings.
KAUFMANN Sonatina No. 12 for Clarinet and Piano
KANITZ String Quartet in D Major
BLOCK Suite for Clarinet and Piano
LAKS Quintet for Piano and Strings
MARCH 15, 2025 · The Music of Poland
Despite being a friend and contemporary of Shostakovich, the musical genius of Mieczysław Weinberg went unrecognized for much of the 20th century due to Soviet-Era suppression. This concert highlights three of Weinberg’s more than 150 works: a playful flute concerto, a concertino for violin and string orchestra, and a dramatic chamber symphony.
WEINBERG Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra
WEINBERG Flute Concerto No. 1
WEINBERG Chamber Symphony No. 1
2023-24 Events
OCT 26, 2023 · Exiles in Hollywood Violinist Adam Millstein and pianist Dominic Cheli in recital, performing music by composers who shaped the sound of film music. All of the composers were from different parts of Europe and were forced into exile following the rise of the Third Reich due to their Jewish Heritage.
DEC 10, 2023 · Shostakovich and Weinberg, A Journey toward Hope In response to the sold-out performance of the Shostakovich and Weinberg Piano Trios last season, this recital paired the composers’ intimately connected piano quintets.
MAR 15, 2024 · The Music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Walter Arlen Dedicated to emigre, composer, and long-time Los Angeles resident Walter Arlen, this program featured premieres of works by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Walter Arlen, who both fled fascism and artistic repression in Europe and made their home in Los Angeles.
2022-23 Events
OCT 12, 2022 · Album Launch: Shapeshifter
JAN 29, 2023 · Shostakovich and Weinberg: A Story of Loss and the Healing Power of Friendship
APR 10 and 11, 2023 · The Mondavi Center presents Music Restored
APR 12, 2023 · Colburn Orchestra
2021-22 Events
MAY 15, 2021 · The Music of Suppressed Composers of the 20th Century with Adam Millstein, Rebecca Stewart, and Shulamit Sarid
MAY 23, 2021 · James Conlon and Musicians from The Colburn School at the Library of Congress
MAY 24–28, 2021 · Recovered Voices Quartet at Nevada Chamber Music Festival
MAY 29, 2021 ·Recovered Voices Quartet perform Schulhoff 1st Quartet with Numi Opera and Gail Gordon at Broad Stage
JUL 11–25, 2021 · Recovered Voices Quartet at Chigiana Chamber Festival in Siena, Italy
Projects
Shapeshifter
In Fall 2022, the James Conlon and the Colburn School released Shapeshifter, an album featuring the music of Erwin Schulhoff.
2021: Schulhoff and More Mini Series
In 2021, The initiative presented a four-part online series which delved into the life and music of Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942), a fascinating, prolific, and multi-faceted composer who embraced a full panoply of styles and influences from his era.
Impact of Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers
- In the Colburn School’s academic setting, Conlon brings his artistry, energy, and knowledge to the next generation of great musicians from the Colburn Conservatory as well as dozens of adult learners each year through a semester-long class. This course is offered each spring, for free to the public, as well as to Colburn students.
- Colburn has hosted two international symposia, welcoming over two dozen scholars and performing musicians from four countries and attended by hundreds of interested members of the public from around the U.S. These symposia have covered two themes, “Music, Censorship and Meaning in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Echoes and Consequences” and “How Should We Perform the Troubled Past?: A Weekend of Concerts and Conversation,” and have brought together musicians and scholars to ask questions about the performance of works composed in fraught circumstances.
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- Colburn Conservatory students and faculty have learned and continue to perform chamber works by a wide range of composers, including:
- Franz Schreker
- Pál Hermann
- Erwin Schulhoff
- Walter Kaufmann
- Viktor Ullmann
- Dick Kattenburg
- Mieczyslaw Weinberg
- Gideon Klein
- Alexander Zemlinsky
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold
- Paul Ben‐Haim
- Szymon Laks
- Hanns Eisler
- Renzo Massarani
- Colburn cello faculty member Clive Greensmith recorded works by composer Pál Hermann for the album Pál Hermann: Complete Surviving Music, Volume One (2021) on the Toccata Classics label. Read more.
- Young Artist Competitions have inspired young musicians of instrumental and vocal works to learn works by composers who were suppressed or killed by the Nazi regime. These competitions offer cash prizes and include a public performance with live jury; students then adopt these works as part of their standard repertoire in their future careers.
