Jewish Music: Live Concert and Conversation

Jewish music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world. Join us for an interactive conversation, wherein together we will explore liturgical poems, or piyyutim, through the cantilation of Holy Scripture to sacred melodies that are inherited through dynasties of Hassidim, or the ultra-orthodox Jews.

Participants are invited to sing along zmirot or Jewish traditional holiday songs in Hebrew – or simply observe. During our time together we will also discuss and view a performance of Yiddish klezmer music and Sephardi music in the Ladino vernacular language.

This conversation has been created in cooperation with a Jewish musician and acclaimed music composer Josef Guslbauer. Josef composed stage music for a successful dramatization of a novel Prayer for Catherine Horowitz by the Holocaust survivor Arnost Lustig.

Led by an expert on Jewish Culture, PhDr. Katerina Prusova, Ph.D., this conversation will present the complexity of Jewish Music. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with a more complete understanding of the specificity of characteristic rhythms, tonalities, sources, and forms of Jewish melodies and lyrics.