Carnegie Hall’s Migrations Festival Comes to YIVO: The Musical Legacy of Eastern European Jews

Wednesday Apr 10, 2019 7:00pm
Lecture
This event is part of Carnegie Hall’s Migrations: The Making of America festival

Co-sponsored by The Forward


Admission: $15
YIVO members & students: $10

Watch the video

Mark Slobin, acclaimed scholar of East European and American Jewish music, will discuss Carnegie Hall’s April 15th musical program, From Shtetl to Stage. In his presentation he will use images and recordings and cover a range of Yiddish theater songs, novelty numbers, concert music, and songs of social movements. Chana Pollack, Archivist of the Forverts newspaper, will also give a brief presentation showcasing Yiddish inked musical newspaper ephemera showing visually via archival ads and photos, some of the ways that Jewish immigrants were offered a platform for entry into the dream of America.

After the presentations, Slobin and Pollack will be joined by Daniel Kahn, Eleanor Reissa, and Lorin Sklamberg for a conversation about the music they are performing on Carnegie Hall’s From Shtetl to Stage program, and on the continued influence of Jewish music in today’s musical culture.


About the Speakers

Mark Slobin is an ethnomusicologist who has written award-winning books on East European Jewish music, from immigrants and cantors to klezmers. He is the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Emeritus at Wesleyan University, a member the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Kurt Hoffman/
Forward

Chana Pollack is the Forward's photo archivist. She frequently researches and translates original Forward material for the newspaper's special historical sections. She was archivist for A Living Lens (ed. Alana Newhouse, W.W. Norton 2007) that showcased the Forward's photo collection and a featured translator in Have I Got A Story For You (ed. Ezra Glinter, W.W. Norton 2017) that presented fiction from the Forward's past century. She was camera operator, editor and producer for the Forward's video series Yiddish Writers Monologues, featuring interviews with several 'last known' Yiddish writers.