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Press Release

March 13, 2026

For Immediate Release

April 23: New York premiere of Eric Chasalow's "Muriel's Songs" at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Monodrama inspired by a grandmother's memoirs traverses the tumult of 20th-Century America through a very personal lens

Performed by mezzo-soprano Sharon Harms and Talea Ensemble

A Jewish American memoir is told through “Muriel’s Songs,” a monodrama by Eric Chasalow, which receives its New York premiere performance on Thursday, April 23, 2026. The mezzo-soprano Sharon Harms performs with the Talea Ensemble at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (15 W. 16th St, New York, NY).

Chasalow was inspired by the memoirs of his grandmother Muriel Gellert Chasalow (1903-2000) to compose this set of songs, which traverses the tumult of 20th century America from a very personal perspective. Each song inhabits its own musical world with stylistic points of departure from Baroque to Tin Pan Alley, The Beatles, Latin Jazz and Disco to Milton Babbitt.

The stories - which cover Muriel’s experiences coming of age and through adulthood, including piano lessons, marriage, and family vacations - were pulled from a collection of works she had written at a senior center creative writing course when she was in her eighties. "I extracted a number of dramatic situations from the book, composing a poem on each, often incorporating Muriel’s sentences to give a sense of her voice," says the composer.

The April 23 concert also features Alex Weiser's "Coney Island Days" (a love letter to Weiser's own grandmother) and Joan Tower's "Petroushskates." Tickets are $18 ($9 seniors/students), available at Yivo.Org/Musical-Memoir.

Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 7:30 pm

New York premiere of

"Muriel's Song" by Eric Chasalow

Sharon Harms, mezzo-soprano

Talea Ensemble

YIVO Center for Jewish History

(15 W. 16th St, New York, NY)

Tickets are $18 ($9 seniors/students) available at Yivo.org/Musical-Memoir

Resources:

• Eric Chasalow essay on Muriel's Songs
• Muriel's Songs texts and context 
• Audio - Muriel's Songs premiere performance
• Video: Muriel's Songs

Video: Muriel's Song

Drawing from every corner of the soundworld, Eric Chasalow creates genre-defying music. As a mentor and long time arts advocate, he works tirelessly to nurture developing composers and encourage a community with the greatest respect for the arts and artists. Part of the last generation of composers to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Eric has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Fromm Foundation at Harvard, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Eric’s music has been commissioned and performed by numerous soloists and ensembles in the US and abroad including Talea Ensemble (New York), Ensemble Phoenix (Basel), and California EAR Unit (Los Angeles). Eric is the Irving Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University where he directs the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS). He is a proud alumnus of Bates College, studied at New England Conservatory of Music, and earned the DMA from Columbia University, studying primarily with Mario Davidovsky.