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About the program
This
program includes songs of different genres: love songs, philosophical
ruminations, lullabies, and dancing songs, which all share one common trait –
at least one of the song's authors has or had some strong connection to Czernowitz, once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and Romania, and now known as Chernivtsi, a beautiful town in modern-day Ukraine. Czernowitz
is well known for its many diverse and important contributions to Yiddish
culture, but few people realize that Czernowitz was
also a birthplace of modern Yiddish song. It was in the cafes of Czernowitz that the songwriting and singing career of Velvl Zbarzher took off, and in
the very same cafes young Avrom Goldfaden
met Velvl Zbarzher and was
inspired to start writing his own songs. One of the very first Yiddish song
collections was published in Czerrnowitz in 1881 by
Dovid Apoteker. In the
last century, an endless inspiration for song was found in the poetry of Itzik Manger, whose rhymes have been set to music by
dozens of composers. The program tonight includes some lesser known and more
recently written works by poets and composers from the cradle of Yiddish
song.
The
program is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the First Yiddish Language
Conference in Czernowitz and to the 600th birthday
of the city of Czernowitz.
Asya Vaisman
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