2019: TWO PIANOS AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY - NEWARK NJ
Rutgers University's Newark campus offers programs to more than 12,000 students. According to U.S. News & World Report it is the most diverse national university in the U.S., partly due to a large student refugee population. No other school has been so recognized.
In September 2018 Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor tasked Jazz Institute Executive Director Wayne Winborne with bringing Two Pianos to that campus, where Halina was professor of piano for the last ten years of her career. (You can hear Halina's unique voice in the audio excerpt from a 1974 Rutgers lecture on Chopin, below.)
An audience of over 200 attended the 27 October 2019 Sunday afternoon event which included an exhibit (2 PM), concert documentary performance (3 PM), and a post-performance discussion (4:15 PM) followed by a reception, all at Rutgers' Paul Robeson Campus Center. Video excerpts from prior Two Pianos performances plus 1987 Holocaust testimony of Halina's daughter Jola
Hoffman also were on display. Arriving attendees were greeted by background music from Halina's Newark concert performances.
The highlights clip above expands the Halina-Jola story and their later lives in Newark. A full-length DVD of this live performance is available.
Our special thanks to Kean University for access to digital footage from Jola's 1987 Holocaust Oral History video
interview, now in the archives of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum (Washington DC).
Halina discusses and plays Chopin, Rutgers-Newark, 1974