Center for Jewish History to Showcase Young Jewish American Composers in Concert

A concert of new classical works by young Jewish American composers will explore how Jewish history and identity informs new works of art music on Wednesday, November 2 at 7 p.m. at The Center for Jewish History.

Composers include Lainie Fefferman, David Hertzberg, Julie Hill, Adam Roberts, Alyssa Weinberg and Alex Weiser. Performers include violin and viola duo andPlay (Maya Bennardo and Hannah Levinson), Brigid Coleridge, Julie Hill, Lee Dionne, Pat Swoboda and Meaghan Burke in various combinations of piano, string quintet and singer.

In the lead up to the concert YIVO will initiate an oral history project with Jewish composers discussing their musical and Jewish upbringings. The concert will feature conversations with the composers growing out of these interviews.

IF YOU GO:

Tickets: $15 general; $10 YIVO members, students

Link: events.cjh.org/event/young-jewish-american-composers

Phone: 212-868-4444

The Center for Jewish History is located at 15 West 16th Street in Manhattan.

The Center for Jewish History in New York City illuminates history, culture, and heritage. The Center provides a collaborative home for five partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The partners' archives comprise the world's largest and most comprehensive archive of the modern Jewish experience outside of Israel. The collections span 1,000 years, with more than 5 miles of archival documents (in dozens of languages and alphabet systems), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings, films, and photographs. The Center's experts are leaders in unlocking archival material for a wide audience through the latest practices in digitization, library science, and public education. As one of the world's foremost research institutions, the Center offers fellowships, a wide array of exhibitions, symposia, conferences and lectures. The Center is a Smithsonian Affiliate, and is a partner of the Google Cultural Institute. The Center for Jewish History is home to the Lillian Goldman Reading Room, Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute, The David Berg Rare Book Room and The Collection Management & Conservation Wing. Public programs create opportunities for diverse audiences to explore the rich historical and cultural material that lives within the Center's walls.

YIVO is a special place for research, education, and reflection on both the past and the present of the Jewish world of the diaspora. Centered around a world-renowned library and archive consisting of over 23 million documents and artifacts from the 14th century to the present day, used by scholars, artists, journalists and museums around the world, YIVO is also a research and education institute, and a vibrant cultural organization. Founded in Berlin and Wilno, Poland in 1925 as the Yiddish Scientific Institute with the support of leading intellectuals and scholars including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, YIVO was based in Wilno (or as it is commonly known, Vilna) from 1925 until forced by World War II to relocate to New York City, where it has been headquartered since 1940. YIVO is the only prewar Jewish archives and library to have survived the Holocaust; the Nazis looted its materials, but some were rescued after the war and returned to YIVO, while other books and documents turned up decades later in Lithuania.

YIVO's archives and library represent the single largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on East European Jewish civilization in the world, and receives upwards of 5,000 on-site visits, email, and phone requests annually. The YIVO archives' some 23 million items include sound and music collections, theater and art collections, communal and personal records, photographs and films, manuscripts, diaries, memoirs, personal correspondence, and much more. YIVO's library has nearly 400,000 volumes in all European languages, and contains the largest collection of Yiddish-language books, pamphlets, and newspapers in the world.

The world's center for Yiddish studies, YIVO's Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, is the oldest intensive Yiddish language-learning program and has been held every summer since 1968. YIVO's rules for transliteration of Yiddish into English are the most commonly accepted standard used by publishers and academics. YIVO offers other adult education and Yiddish language programs, research opportunities, and scholarly publications including YIVO's Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, one of the world's most comprehensive and free online encyclopedia's with over 180,000 visits a year. Showcasing this work and creating a platform for the continuation of this cultural legacy, YIVO offers dozens of public programs a year including lectures, conferences, concerts, theatrical performances, film screenings, and exhibitions, featuring award-winning scholars, writers, performers, artists, and more. Visit yivo.org for more.