The North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement will host the Keowee Chamber Music in concert. The noted local group will launch its new musical series, "Elegy," at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, at UNC Asheville's Reuter Center. "Elegy" is a three-year project focusing on chamber music, poetry and biographical stories of European Jewish artists whose lives were cut short or changed by the Holocaust. The performance is free and open to the public.

This first performance in the "Elegy" series will be composed of several parts. Mara Simmons will read the poetry of Paul Celan, prominent post-World War II poet and Jewish labor camp survivor. Music by two Jewish composers from Prague will also be presented. Soprano Tena Greene will perform songs in Czech by female composer Vitezslava Kapralova. Flutist Kate Steinbeck and pianist Karen Sams will perform sonata for flute and piano by Erwin Schulfoff and a solo work by piano by Frederic Chopin. The centerpiece of the program will be a multimedia presentation by Elizabeth Spragins about the life of concert pianist and concentration camp survivor Alice Hertz-Sommer. Spragins has conducted interviews with Hertz-Sommer, who is now 104 years old, for the last 10 years.

For more information, call the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at 828/251-6140.