Culture in Quarantine: Music

Aug 5, 2020

Faced with the pandemic and the necessity of social distancing this March, YIVO quickly pivoted to online learning and Live online programming in order to provide for our community—both local and global. Here’s a roundup of our recent music-related programs.


 

BEYLE100: Celebrating a Century of the Yiddish Songs, Poetry & Artistic Vision of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman

Aired: August 9, 2020

Concert | An online concert celebrating the 100th birthday of Yiddish songwriter, poet, and singer Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman (1920-2013), featuring many of the Yiddish world’s leading contemporary performers. (This program is conducted primarily in Yiddish.)

Watch Now


 

 

Continuing Evolution: Yiddish Folksong in Classical Music

Aired: June 30, 2020

Concert | A premiere of new works commissioned by YIVO, by composers Martin Bresnick, Marti Epstein, Aaron Kernis, Judith Shatin, and Alex Weiser.

Watch Now


 

 

Sephardic Art Song: A Musical Legacy of the Sephardic Diaspora

Aired: June 23, 2020

Lecture and Concert | Lori Şen discusses the history, language, and culture of the Sephardim, with a special focus on the elements and stylistic features of Sephardic music, followed by a recital of Sephardic songs with Lori Sen, Jeremy Lyons, and Alexei Ulitin.

Watch LECTURE Now

Watch CONCERT Now


 

 

Ten Children’s Songs of Y. L. Peretz by Moses Milner (1921)

Aired: June 11, 2020

Concert | Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Ryan MacEvoy McCullough perform 10 Children’s Songs of Y. L. Peretz (1921) by composer Moses Milner.

Watch Now


 

 

Where is Our Homeland? Songs from Testimonies in the Fortunoff Video Archive

Aired: April 27, 2020

Concert | The Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble & Sasha Lurje perform Where is Our Homeland, an album of songs transcribed from Holocaust survivors’ testimonies in the Fortunoff Video Archive.

Watch Now


 

 

Beethoven in the Yiddish Imagination

Aired: April 22, 2020

Concert | A performance of Ode to Joy in Yiddish translation, a bilingual dramatic reading of a Yiddish retelling of an apocryphal story of the origins of the Moonlight Sonata, and performances of two of Beethoven's masterworks with Jewish connections.

Watch Part 1 Now

Watch Part 2 Now