by Mike Telin

“Nobody who comes to the performance will regret it. I promise,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks exclaimed during a telephone conversation. On Wednesday, October 28 at 7:30, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series will continue with Merima Ključo’s “The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book,” a multimedia work for accordion, piano, and video. The piece traces the story of a precious Jewish prayer book’s journey from medieval Spain to 20th-century Bosnia — where it was hidden and rescued during World War II — to its restoration by the National Museum in Sarajevo after the 1992-1995 war.

Ključo’s work was inspired by Brooks’s 2008 historical novel People of the Book. In an interview with this publication, Ključo said, “I got inspired by this amazing book and became obsessed with the idea of the project that would musically and visually follow the Haggadah’s journey from Spain to Sarajevo.” [Read more…]