Bernhard Sekles (1872–1933) was one of the leading figures in German music in the first decades of the twentieth century, prominent as composer, educator and administrator. In 1928, as director of the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt, he established the first academic programme in jazz studies, an act of courage and conviction that unleashed furious attacks from the Nazi press.

Solomia Soroka, Ukrainian-born, is professor of violin at Goshen College, Indiana. Noreen and Phillip Silver both teach at the University of Maine. Together they have already recorded a CD for Toccata Classics of chamber music by the Italian composer Leone Sinigaglia, who in 1944 collapsed of a heart attack when Nazi troops arrived to arrest him for deportation.