Mimi Stern-Wolfe
Her concerts have served to protest the Vietnam War and support the Civil Rights movement, and she contributed to a series of concert programs with varied repertory including “Musecology” and “War and Pieces”; celebrations of Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes and Harriet Tubman; concerts of women composers, new composers of chamber operas, and a focus on the music of minority ethnic groups. Her annual Benson AIDS Concerts, presenting music of composers lost to HIV/AIDS, are captured in the award-winning documentary film “All the Way Through Evening.” Her ongoing series “Composers of the Holocaust” is devoted to the music of composers lost to the world in the camps of Europe. She has recently presented Marc Blitzstein’s “The Cradle Will Rock” and Harold Rome’s “Pins and Needles,” and she currently directs the Senior Caring Community Chorus, teaches opera at the School of Visual Arts and continues to bring her socially relevant repertory to audiences across New York City.
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Interview
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Mimi Stern-Wolfe is founder and artistic director of Downtown Music Productions, a community concert organization presenting socially relevant, thematic music. She has given recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and is as an orchestra conductor, concert accompanist, chamber music pianist, opera coach, solo performer, and producer of concert events. She has long grappled with the dilemma of being both a serious and performing classical musician and a politically conscious left activist. A Lower Eastsider since 1963, she was one of the founders of Liberation Nursery, offering a viable education in an East 4th St. storefront, at the lowest cost daycare ever knew—$12.50 monthly. She developed a Children’s Musical Theater, taught mini operas for public performance, and continues to bring her 25 piece Downtown Chamber Orchestra into Lower East Side public schools for special Narrative Orchestral Visits.