A feature in JAZZIZ Magazine on celebrated jazz musician Coco Schumann, entitled “Playing Music in Hell,” focuses on his experiences in concentration camps during WWII in a nine-page spread replete with… Read more JAZZIZ focuses on the “remarkable autobiography” of music legend Coco Schumann →
In this video featured on the culture blog Laughing Squid, Coco Schumann is the second guitarist discussed by musician Steve Onotera in his list of guitarists who found musical success despite… Read more Coco Schumann and “Guitarists Who Overcame Great Adversity” →
Thank you, Julie Carbonara of The Jewish Chronicle for an illuminating obituary honoring Coco Schumann on Yom HaShoah: “He insisted he was a musician who survived the concentration camps, not a… Read more Coco Schumann honored on Holocaust Remembrance Day →
Manuscripts, the quarterly journal of The Manuscript Society, writes that this book “fascinates as a case study of a man driven by a lifelong compulsion, a psychological need, to combat oppression…a moving portrait of a compelling figure in a field rarely occupied by noble persons struggling to combat evil and right wrongs.”
An interesting view into the field of investigative journalism as we follow the author’s steps to find more information at the Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris [which] exposes the reluctance of the French police to come to terms with its own past.
“Heda’s torturous path through some of the 20th century’s greatest calamities is rendered with deep wisdom and a poetic eye for detail. Her misfortunes, and her perseverance through them, make Hitler,… Read more “Hitler, Stalin and I” receives a starred review from Shelf Awareness →
This compelling personal and insightful tale of survival brings to light another brilliant and selfless Terezín artist. It is storytelling from the inside by a music-maker who rediscovered the humanizing power of jazz and swing at a time when it was needed most.
Unusually interesting amidst the plethora of self-serving musician autobiographies. Schumann has a better story to tell … survival under the hardest conditions, the value of well-placed friends and the vagaries of fortune as well as the impulse to create.