Forgotten Voices A new project from Hackney Music Development Trust is bringing a harrowing but important past to life. When Jonathan Dove was asked to write music for diaries of Holocaust victims he envisaged a journey of doom and dread. He was surprised by the emotions he experienced. ‘I was quite unprepared for writings that often seem so alive, so grown-up, so full of hope,' says the award-winning composer. ‘Of course there are the familiar, horrific images – but alongside them are comic stories or wistful recollections of home, or the feelings of hope that come with spring.'

Dove realised something profound during the readings: ‘Normally the Holocaust is something we can't bear to look at. We recoil and remain outside it. Reading these poems took me inside the experience.'

The Hear Our Voice project is the brainchild of librettist Tertia Sefton-Green and is the final stage of a new international music education project created by Hackney Music Development Trust (HMDT), whose Royal Philharmonic Society Award-winning opera project On London Fields premiered last year.

HMDT is a dynamic resource for all those who live, work or study in Hackney, facilitating and coordinating music projects for people of all ages. It encompasses a broad range of cultural traditions and talents and works closely with schools and many other organisations in the area.

To be performed on 15 July at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, Hear Our Voice uses the atrocities of the Holocaust to increase young people's awareness of current issues of persecution and racial intolerance. In collaboration with Matthew King, Dove has gathered material for the score by working with children from the UK , Germany and Czech Republic.

The project involves 900 students aged 10-20 throughout the various phases of the work's creation. Each performance will involve a multinational and multilingual cast of children, many of whom are from disadvantaged areas of their native city.

Says Dove, ‘The fantastic thing about Tertia's conception is that it provided a framework and a focus so that we could work clearly and sympathetically without getting completely overwhelmed. The historical events are impossible to adequately describe or respond to in their ghastly complexity but it is quite possible to take a poem written by a child and find a way to sing it.'

‘My original concept of the piece was always for it to be performed in several languages by children from different countries,' Sefton-Green explains. ‘It has been very exciting to have this dream realised and to look at the different impact and sensitivities involved in each country's own heritage and perspective of the subject matter. Holocaust education is taught differently in the countries we are working in and it has been challenging and stimulating to find ways of making the project work with different educational systems.'

The work also had a profound effect on the children involved. Working with young people from different nationalities, says Sefton-Green, offered a unique opportunity to look at how they approached the subject matter.

‘The creative approach, which particularly the Germans found difficult to begin with, has been incredibly successful and in Nurenberg the art exhibition the students have created has exceeded all expectations,' she says. ‘Certainly the subject matter is closer to and much more difficult to approach for the German students whereas here, for instance, it very much affected students from Kosovo and Bosnia .'

The £225,000 project is being developed and realised in partnership with the Internationales Kammermusik Festival Nürnberg and The Jewish Museum in Prague, with two further premiere performances taking place in their respective cities.

It seems as though Hear Our Voice will affect audiences as much as the participants and, like HMDT's previous efforts, cause a stir on the music education scene.

‘As an adult in the 21st century, it seems increasingly crucial to seek new ways of raising awareness for young people,' says Sefton-Green. ‘It is very difficult to comprehend history in terms of facts and figures – but relating to the words and stories of children one's own age seems a more meaningful way of understanding and absorbing the issues, which are still facing us all today.'

For more information visit www.hmdt.org.uk