Conceived by Merima Ključo, the Sarajevo Haggadah: The Music of the Book is a 50-minute (approximate) composition for piano, accordion, and video. The piece uses music and visual art to tell the turbulent story of the Sarajevo Haggadah – an illuminated manuscript from the fourteenth century. This sacred book was intended to be used during the Jewish Passover Seder.The motivation for the video was to create a visual backdrop to the music that would subtly interweave the imagery of the Sarajevo Haggadah with elements of the book’s history. The textures found in the illustrations, as well as the stains and signs of aging found in the book served as inspiration for creating similar “illumination” and deterioration effects seen in the video. The animations are almost entirely composed of imagery from the book, yet arranged in an abstract way that blend with the musical composition to make a unified aural-visual experience.
2020 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
2019 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, CenterStage, Reston Community Center, Fairfax, VA
2019 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, First Church, Jaffrey Center, NH
2017 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
2016 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Scena Amadeo, Zagreb, Croatia
2015 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
2015 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina,Sarajevo, Bosnia
2015 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Jan Popper Theater, UCLA, CA
2015 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Morgan Library, NYC
2015 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Logan Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Texas Performing Arts, Austin, TX
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Ashkenaz Festival, Toronto, Ontario, CA
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Jewish Literary Festival, Washington D.C.
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA
2014 Sarajevo Haggadah: the Music of the Book, Sandglass Theater, Putney, VT