Nusakh Vilne Memorial

Annual Nusakh Vilne Memorial Program Co-sponsored by Nusakh Vilne and Lithuanian Culture Institute In Person: Admission: Free Zoom Livestream: Admission: Free Watch the video

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Join us in commemorating the Jewish community of Vilna through poetry, music, and presentation. This year, Justin Cammy will discuss the poetic legacy of Yung-vilne and Avrom Sutzkever using an archival document as his launching point. A mini concert featuring musical settings of poetry of Avrom Sutzkever by Lazar Weiner, Henech Kon, Majer Bodanski, Judith Shatin, and Alex Weiser performed by Adrian Rosas and Ya-Jhu Yang will follow Cammy's presentation.

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About the Participants

Justin Cammy is professor of Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College. An alum of YIVO's Uriel Weinreich Yiddish Summer Program and a past recipient of YIVO's Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar fellowship, he also serves as on-site summer director of the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Yiddish Summer Program at Tel Aviv University. Cammy is a leading expert on the interwar Yiddish literary group Young Vilna. His translation of Abraham Sutzkever's From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg (McGill-Queen's) was a finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award.

Hailed by the New York Times as “a stalwart bass-baritone with a burnished voice” and in Opera News as a “mellifluous bass-baritone [with] theatrical flair”, Adrian Rosas is an artist with “impressive experience and talent” (The Boston Globe). He has had the opportunity to perform with major North American opera houses; newly written works with Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Detroit Opera, American Lyric Theater, American Opera Projects, and the SEM Ensemble; and as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, and The Library of Congress. Adrian holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School.

Composer and pianist Ya-Jhu Yang holds a bachelor's degree from the National Taiwan Normal University and graduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music. Ms. Yang is currently the associate music director and conductor of the Pennsylvania Girlchoir. Ms. Yang has given recitals at churches in the New York, Philadelphia, and Delaware areas to benefit church missions and arts organizations. In 2016, Ms. Yang and her husband Sheridan Seyfried started "Celtic to Classical," a summer concert series based in Lewes, Delaware, to produce fun, engaging, and genre-eclectic concerts.