Album Notes

Journey to Justice, tells the powerful story of Howard Triest. As a teenager he escaped the Nazi domination of his home in Munich to later return as an American soldier involved in the liberation of Buchenwald and the rescue of his grandmother from Theresienstadt. Acting as the interpreter for the psychiatrists at the Nuremberg Trials he interviewed the Nazi high command responsible for the deaths of his parents and close relatives.

Terry Herald, an experienced film composer, created the original music for the documentary. Producer Steve Palackdharry relied on Herald’s music to express the poignancy of the inevitable partings, the urgency of the flight from Nazi persecution and the eventual sense of triumph and reconciliation that Howard experiences. Employing a wonderful cast of musicians including Ann Lemke on English Horn, Sonia Lee on solo violin and Lindsay Papke on piano and a string ensemble, Herald had a broad palette of timbres to paint an emotionally complex picture. His haunting “Howard’s Theme” ties the film together with a sense of the loneliness Triest experienced while still conveying hopefulness.