Brave Old World, Newton, MA, Mar 8, 2008
Brave Old World
Song of the Lodz Ghetto
World-renowned music quartet Brave Old World, the super group of the Klezmer revival, brings forth a breathtakingly original program combining the soulfulness of Yiddish tradition, the finesse of classical music and the vitality of jazz.
Performances are Saturday, March 8 at 8pm and Sunday, March 9 at 2pm and will take place at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center, 333 Nahanton Street in Newton. Tickets are $28 general; $26 student/senior and can be purchased by calling the JCC Box Office at 617-965-5226 or online at www.lsjcc.org/home/cultural_jewish.html.
Hailed as "the most innovative and emotionally powerful work of New Jewish Music in the world today," Song of the Lodz Ghetto is a song cycle in which memory and imagination freely interact to create a Proustian journey between past and present. At the center are Brave Old World's arrangements of the rare Jewish street and cabaret songs from the Nazi Ghetto of Lodz, Poland 1940-44. Leading through the Lodz repertoire like stepping-stones through the river of memory are Brave Old World's own original compositions, reflections on 17 years of performing Jewish music. Michael Alpert's moving Berlin 1990 forms the emotional and musical counterpoint to the passionate and ironic street songs of the bard of the Lodz Ghetto, Yankele Herszkowicz. A musical and spiritual journey of resistance, love and reconciliation.
A sparse but effective use of props, lighting and staging give the evening its theatrical character. The entire program is presented in Yiddish, with projected English supertitles.
Nominated the Best Klezmer Band of 2006 by the Jewish Music Awards, Winter and Winter recording artists Brave Old World, whose performers include Alan Bern, Michael Alpert, Kurt Bjorling and Stuart Brotman, have been creating, performing and teaching Klezmer and New Jewish Music throughout the world since 1989. They have performed and recorded with such notable performers as Itzhak Perlman and at venues as prestigious as Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall. Song of the Lodz Ghetto was named by Billboard as the Best of 2005 in the World Music category and by Newsday as the Best CD of 2005.