This collection consists of transcripts of seventeen interviews with Esther Hoffman Wexler (1918-2014), conducted by her cousin, Lawrence Freund, between 2012 and 2014. Hoffman, a Canadian-born concert pianist and a longtime piano teacher at the Mannes College of Music (which became a division of The New School in 1989), discusses her life experiences and her career as a musician and as a teacher in New York City and Toronto.

Menachem Zur (born 1942) is an Israeli composer who studied at Mannes College of Music (now, Mannes School of Music), and Columbia University. His compositions are influenced by modernism, post-tonal music, and set theory, as well as traditional Jewish music. The collection includes various chamber music scores by Zur, mostly in photocopy form, as well as a recording of several of his compositions.