This remembrance Sunday 9th November is a time of great reflection, marking the end of the 75th anniversary year of Kristallnacht.  Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, was a series of co-ordinated attacks carried out by paramilitaries and civilians against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9th and 10th November 1938.  The attacks left the streets covered with broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues.

 

To mark the occasion of the 75th anniversary, Jews and Christians gathered together for a Service of Solemn Remembrance and Hope at Westminster Abbey on 25 November 2013.  Conducted by the Dean of Westminster the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, the service featured readings from survivors, lighting of the Shoah Menorah from Belsize Square Synagogue by Rabbi Stuart Altshuler and an address from Rabbi The Baroness Neuberger DBE, Senior Rabbi, West London Synagogue.  The choirs of Belsize Square Synagogue and West London Synagogue conducted by Benjamin Wolf and Christopher Bowers Broadbent respectively, also sang.  They were later joined by the Zemel Choir and soprano Shirley Vaughan and performed a composition by Cecilia MacDowell, which was jointly commissioned by the Jewish Music Institute and conducted by Benjamin Wolf.

 

1938 was also the year of the Kinderstransport and as this 75th anniversary year also draws to a close an event of remembrance is taking place at The Roundhouse on Sunday 9th November at 3pm.  Organised by the Association of Jewish Refugees it features a composition by composer/conductor Carl Davis, detailed in the item below.

 

To mark these events JMI presents you can hear a podcast featuring Canon Hawkey, Reverend Weisman and Benjamin Wolf, with readings and music from the event. This feature can be heard here.

Cellists Raphael Wallfisch and Natalie Clein and violist Rivka Golani have all performed Bloch’s major orchestral works to great acclaim in many parts of the world. Recently both Raphael and Natalie have made highly praised recordings of Schelomo, one of his major works for cello and orchestra. Rivka’s recordings of the Viola Suites span many years. After a recital of some of Ernest Bloch's music, they will talk about how they first encountered Bloch, what drew them to his music and their insights into performing it. It will be a privilege to hear them play.  The event’s purposes are to raise awareness of Bloch’s music and funds enabling students to study his work in the form of masterclasses.

 

A podcast featuring interviews with Dr Alex Knapp, Cellist Raphael Wallfisch and Cellist Natalie Clein can be heard here

JMI is proud to sponsor, The Last Train To Tomorrow, which tells the extraordinary story of the Kindertransport through a sequence of ten songs composed and conducted by the internationally acclaimed artist Carl Davis CBE and written by the celebrated children’s author Hiawyn Oram.

Commissioned by the Halle Orchestra, the song cycle will be performed by the Finchley Children’s Music Group. The concert will also feature The Marriage of Figaro Overture by Mozart and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto performed by City of London Sinfonia, together with an outstanding young violin soloist from The Yehudi Menuhin School. The whole event will be introduced by Natasha Kaplinsky, who is a member of the government's holocaust commission. If you would like to find out more information about this event then please visit the page here. We talked to Carl Davis CBE and the Managing Director of the Association of Jewish Refugees, organisers of the concert, about this important performance and this podcast can be heard here

Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) with Peter Brathwaite (baritone) and Nigel Foster (Piano)

 

A critical song-based reconstruction of the infamous Düsseldorf exhibition of 1938, intended by the Nazi government to alert the German public to “inferior and ultimately dangerous” forms of music, particularly jazz and Jewish. The concert paints a vivid picture of the Berlin Kabarett scene of the 1920s and 1930s, and will feature the songs of Kurt Weill, who fled Germany in 1933, agitprop songs by Hanns Eisler, who was exiled twice; from Germany through being Jewish and from the US through being a communist, and music by Ernst Krenek, Zemlinsky and Friedrich Hollaender. There will be spoken excerpts from the “Entartete Musik” exhibition pamphlet (1938) and the Nazi-sponsored Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (Encyclopedia of Jews in Music). This concert will be enhanced with video projections created by digital artist James Symonds.

Led by Polina Shepherd, one of Europe’s leading musicians in the field, JMI’s Zingt! The People’s Chorus at JW3 is open to all. Participants learn traditional and new Yiddish songs, nigunim and specific ornamentations of this singing style. They sing Yiddish songs in 1-4 parts with and without sheet music, and nigunim mostly accompanied by piano but also a cappella.

 

Dates:
11th & 25th November
9th December.

Culminating in a concert at JW3 on
23rd December.

JMI Is proud to host the master musician Tcha Limberger for this exclusive masterclass. Come and learn gypsy violin from one of the world’s greatest living exponents of this deep and rich musical tradition.Over the last ten years multi-instrumentalist Tcha Limberger has become one of the most prominent and important figures in folk music of the Carpathian Basin. He studied the music of Kalotaszeg, Transylvania, with the legendary Neti Sandor, and the Magyar Nota style of Budapest with Horvat Bela. Born into a famous family of western European Manouche musicians he grew up surrounded by the Gypsy swing style of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli and has toured with Fapy Lafertin and Lollo Meier. At seventeen he studied modern classical composition with Belgian composer Dick Vanderharst and recently composed the music for the piece by Les ballets C de la B ‘Patchagonia’ directed by Alain Platel.

Other than his Budapest Gyspy Orchestra and the Kalotaszeg Trio his current projects include a free improvisation guitar duo with classical guitarist Herman Schamp, and his all-string swing band Les Violons de Brussels. Until now though his performances with the Budapest Orchestra have earned him most notoriety whilst The Sunday Times described him as “The polymath virtuoso Tcha Limberger is the king of Gypsy music!

All instruments welcome although strings players will benefit the most.

Grade 5 or proficient equivalent.

A rare and thrilling opportunity to see two of London's greatest bands and champions of Jewish music; She'Koyokh and Los Desterrados. Both ensembles are stalwarts on the London scene and have been recently nominated for the Songlines World Music Awards. She'Koyokh have been described as "one of the finest klezmer ensembles on the planet" (The Australian), and Los Desterrados one of the finest exponents in existence of the Judeo-Spanish musical tradition. This line-up is a dream team for JMI, who believe strongly in their these groups and their creative mission to express this rich heritage and wonderful music. This concert is this month's must see event.

Daphna Sadeh received her music education at the Manhattan School of Music in New York in Classical and Jazz music. After she graduated, she toured internationally with various World music groups as well as performing with Classical orchestras. Daphna formed her group The Voyagers, based in London after she moved to the UK. Her aim was to bring together a contemporary fusion of Klezmer and Middle Eastern music.

 

Daphna Sadeh was commissioned to compose music and record a CD with the Voyagers for “Tzadik”, the record label from New York, of the renowned Jazz musician John Zorn. In addition to that she has received a grant from the Art Council to support the project. Recently Daphna composed a ground breaking composition for Baroque and Klezmer and Middle Eastern music. Mediterranean & various forms of middle Eastern musical traditions bend and echo through her compositions. It is this mix of baroque and Klezmer music that can be heard on her new album, "Born in Parallel".

 

Daphna Sadeh - Composition & Double Bass

Stewart Curtis - Clarinet, Flute, Recorder

Ivor Goldberg - Guitar & Vocals

Mark Bassey - Trombone

Eddie Hession - Accordion

Guy Schalom - Percussion & Drums

We interviewed Daphna Sadeh about this commission and that podcast feature can be heard here:

The international concert series at Central Synagogue presents Jack Liebeck and Danny Driver's "Hebrew Melody". The concert will begin with Brahms' Sonata in A major, followed by Bloch’s Baal Shem suite (including its famous second movement, Nigun). After the interval, the Achron, followed by Mendelssohn’s wonderful F Major Sonata and finally, John Williams’s unforgettable main theme to Schindler’s List.

 

Rhythm and Jews

 

Part of the EFG London Jazz Festival

Sat 1 Nov
Jamboree

 

Don Kipper at Le Quecumbar
Mon 10 Nov
8pm

Info here

Don Kipper at SOAS JCR

Fri 14 Nov

SOAS JCR, Russell Square

 

Don Kipper at Jamboree

Wed 26 Nov