Dana Sandler I Never Saw Another Butterfly

Dana Sandler
I Never Saw Another Butterfly
Fractamodi

Vocalist and composer Dana Sandler has produced a moving tribute to the youngest victims of the Holocaust. The album title is taken from "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," a book published in 1959. The book consisted of poems and art by the Jewish children in the Terezin Concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. The camp held 144,000 prisoners, including Jewish scholars, musicians, and artists. The album is dedicated to Friedl-Dicker-Brandeis, an Austrian artist and educator who organized secret art classes for the children of Terezin. She collected 4500 children's drawings and poems in two suitcases before she was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. Fifteen thousand children passed through Terezin, of which fewer than 100 survived.

The book made a deep impression on Sandler when she was exposed to it as a teenager. While a classically trained pianist, Dana Sandler focused her vocal studies on jazz and musical theater. She earned degrees in jazz vocal performance from the University of Miami School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music.

Sandler first became interested in setting poetry to music while attending the New England Conservatory. In January 2019, she found herself "in a position to compose and the melodies poured out of me. I knew that it was meant to be for this moment, at a time where I would be composing this music through the lens of motherhood at a time when Holocaust survivors able to share their stories are dwindling in number and at a time when, sadly, parallels today are all too present."

"I Never Saw Another Butterfly' is a song-cycle that highlights poets in the Terezín Concentration Camp: Pavel Friedmann, Franta Bass, and Alena Synkova-Munkova, as well as additional unknown young poets. Synkova-Munkova was one of the few children to survive. The music comprises four sections, each dedicated to a poet and beginning with a through-composed instrumental dedication. 
For this undertaking, Sandler enlisted world-renowned musicians that she met while studying at the New England Conservatory. These include Carmen Staaf (Dee Dee Bridgewater) on piano, Jorge Roeder (Gary Burton, John Zorn) on bass, Peter Kenagy on trumpet and flugelhorn, Rick Stone on alto saxophone and clarinet, Michael Winograd on clarinet and her husband, drummer and percussionist Austin McMahon (Jerry Bergonzi). Her daughter, Rory Sandler McMahon, adds voice to two selections.

The first part of the song cycle highlight Pavel Friedman with a sober introduction, "Dear Pavel" with Staaf's solemn piano and Kenagy's elegiac trumpet highlighting the somber mood. Sandler has a lovely, lilting soprano who simply sings these poems against the enchanting light, airy setting she has composed. Friedman's "The Butterfly" served to provide the book and this recording with its title from his words: "For seven weeks I've lived here / Penned up inside this ghetto / But I have found what I love here / The dandelions call to me / And the white chestnut branches in the court / Only I never saw another butterfly."

Franta Bass, the youngest of the poets, was just 14 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz. "Dear Franta" is a short introduction with Roeder's bass and Winograd's clarinet. They are featured prominently on the compositions "Home/ The Old House," where Sandler longingly sings about Franta looking toward home and the city where he was born. This is followed by Sandler's daughter singing about the deserted old home.  The final part of this cycle is "The Garden," where Staaf's spare piano accompanies Sandler singing the haunting words, "A Little boy, a sweet boy / Like that growing blossom / when the blossom comes to bloom / The little boy will be no more."

Alena Synkova-Monkova is the only of the poets who survived and passed away in 2008. 'Dear Alena" maintains the somber mod with haunting flugelhorn from Kenagy. There is a measure of rebelliousness and hope in her poems, "Untitled" and "I'd Like To Go Alone." The latter number is matched with Ani Ma'amin" that was composed by Azriel David Fastag in a cattle car on its way to Treblinka. Winograd's clarinet provides a moving interpretation of the melody with its lyrics of believing in complete faith in the coming of the messiah. This performance closes on a lively manner in accordance with a sense of hope. The final poem of this section is "Tears," with a haunting reminder that without tears there is no life. Staaf's simple piano provides the framing for Roeder's bass solo.

The final section is centered on anonymous poets whose moving words transcend the fact we do not know who the authors were or what happened to them. The introduction to this portion, "Dear Anonymous," is lively and reflective of a hopeful future. During "On a Sunny Evening." Rick Stone takes flight on alto sax after a line, "I want to fly but where, how high?" Further, the anonymous poet wrote defiantly, "If in barbed wire, things can bloom/ What couldn't I. I will not die!" The closing "Birdsong," matched with a reprise of "Butterfly," offers another message of hope with its words, "Then if the tears obscure your way/You'll know how wonderful it is/ To be alive." She repeats this several times set against a vibrant backing before her daughter joins her in singing this a couple more times in closing the song cycle.

Dana Sandler has composed memorable music for these poems. She has crafted delicate settings for her lovely, sensitive vocals. The result is this profoundly moving recording of hope to transcend dark times.

This important, profoundly moving, recording is being released on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), April 21, 2020, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Concentration Camps.

I received my review copy from a publicist. Here is a trailer for this recording.