Ruth Lomon

A native of Montreal, Canada, Ruth Lomon (b Montreal, 7 Nov 1930) attended le Conservatoire de Quebec and McGill University. She continued her studies with Francis Judd Cooke at the New England Conservatory of Music and later with Witold Lutosławski at Dartington College in England.

Since 1998, Ms. Lomon has been Composer/Resident Scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University. She composed an oratorio, Testimony of Witnesses, for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra. She was the recipient of a grant from the Hadassah International Research Center (now the Hadassah Brandeis Institute) for this work.

She was commissioned by the Pro Arte Chamber Ensemble to compose a trumpet concerto, Odyssey, for Charles Schlueter, principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This work was premiered in 1998.

Her Requiem for full chorus and soprano solo accompanied by brass and woodwinds was premiered in Boston (1997) by Coro Allegro, David Hodgkins, Artistic Director.

During 1995-96, Ms. Lomon was a fellow of the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe/Harvard where she composed "Songs of Remembrance," a song cycle on poems of the Holocaust. This hour length work was premiered at Harvard University's John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, and has since had numerous performances including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. in April 1998, and the IAWM Congress in London, England, in July 1999 where she received the Miriam Gideon Composition award for this work. In 2001, she also received the Chicago Professional Musicians Award for the 10th song of the cycle, which is set for mezzo soprano, English horn and piano. "Songs of Remembrance" is recorded on the CRI label.

Lomon is currently composer-in-residence for Boston Secession a professional choral ensemble. Boston Secession, Jane Ring Frank, Artistic Director, premiered Lomon's Testimony of Witnesses, a full length oratorio based on the poetry of Holocaust victims and survivors on March 22, 2009 with a score for chamber orchestra, vocal ensemble, and four vocal soloists. The texts — in Hebrew, French, German, Italian, Polish, English and Yiddish — represent the personal experience of sixteen survivors and victims, including ten individual women and children, and reflect the international impact of the Holocaust and the variety of individuals and communities that were forever changed by it.

www.ruthlomon.com

Ruth Lomon at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University

Arsis Press