Concerts and Workshops

From the 1920s "Vitebsk Renaissance" of Marc Chagall and his fellow-artists to the repressions of the 1930s, from accusations in "dangerous formalism" against Schostakovich and his contemporaries to blossoming of Jewish cultural and Academic institutions in Russia and Ukraine today… This workshop will explore the musical journey of suppression and unprecedented awakening of the Jewish culture and identity in the former Soviet Union through the personal experience of Cantor Natasha J. Hirschhorn, a Kiev-born musicologist, composer and performer.

An outstanding Jewish folklorist, Beregovsky (1892-1961) has devoted his entire life to collecting Yiddish songs, niggunim and klezmer tunes, most of which remained unpublished for almost 70 years. Now you can learn and sing some gems from this unique collection recently published in Moscow.

If you would like to learn Tum-Balalaika in its original version and to feast on some "macaronic" folksongs, this workshop invites you to take a look at many striking similarities and fascinating connections between Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish folk melodies.

We will explore how Schostakovitch's and other great Russian composers' interest in Jewish music and culture helped rescue and memorialize Jewish musical traditions even in the darkest years of Soviet anti-semitism.