[Mendele] MENDELE PERSONAL NOTICES & ANNOUNCEMENTS--New Yiddish CD from Yale Strom

[Victor Bers]

MENDELE PERSONAL NOTICES & ANNOUNCEMENTS

Feb. 18, 2016

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From: Yitztyco at aol.com
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2016 21:06:04 -0500
Subject: New Yiddish CD from Yale Strom
ALBUM TITLE: City of the Future, Yiddish Songs from the Former Soviet Union

Artists: Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi

Catalogue #: EUCD2617

 City of the Future, Yiddish Songs from the Former Soviet Union is a new
production by Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi with compositions by Shmuel Polonski
and lyrics by Yiddish poets such as Peretz Markish, Izi Kharik and Itzik
Feffer. Most of the songs on City of Future are being introduced to the
world for the first time such as The Young Guard,Girls Sewing at the
Machines, The Song of the Collective Farmer, My Youth, This Will Be,
Village Pain, Luminous Detachments, Not to Worry and City of the Future.
These songs were formerly only heard within Yiddish communities in the
Soviet Union.

City of the Future contains songs from Birobidzhan or The Jewish Autonomous
Region located on the Amur River in the 1930s at a time when Yiddish
culture was thriving in the former Soviet Union with theatres, schools,
choirs, literature and discussion groups. Composer Shmuel Polonski wanted
to spread the joy of Yiddish and Soviet life through these songs, largely
sung by youth choruses.

In fact, City of the Future is as much an historical record as it is
musical album , as the album’s executive producer, author and certified
vegvayzer – secular Jewish leader – Eric A. Gordon writes in his
informative liner notes, ‘City of the Future is a contemporary recreation
of the 19 songs in his [Shmuel Polonski] 1931 songbook Far yugnt/For
Youth…. At that particular moment in the arc of Russian, Soviet, and world
history, this 29-year-old composer had reason to be hopeful. Addressing
himself to youth, Polonski optimistically presumed that other songbooks and
new traditions would emerge.’

O nly 3 songs on the album were well-known in Yiddish culture, being The
Well, The Factory Song and Hirsh Lekert. Hirsh Lekert was a much celebrated
folk hero amongst Jewish workers. As a Jewish social activist, Lekert
defied the Czarist Governor of Vilna and was eventually arrested and hung
for his protests in 1902.

Translating songs from Polonski’s original works for City of the Future was
unique and exacting work undertaken by linguistic specialist Hershl
Hartman, who also assisted the singers to adhere to Yiddish theatre’s
Voliner dialect where possible. The songs original rhyme-patterns were also
maintained as far as they could be. City of the Future follows in Yale
Strom’s tradition of musical excellence and variance from a cappella in The
Factory, to the art song October and carnival Klezmer Young Forces.

Yale Strom carefully selected seven of the best interpreters of Yiddish
songs including Judy Bressler, Michael Alpert, Jack ‘Yankl’ Falk, Daniel
Kahn, Vira Lozinsky, Anthony Russell and Elizabeth Schwartz. As Yale Strom
says in his own words: ‘ This recording brings a freshness to a genre of
Yiddish songs that still resonates today. I hope this project encourages
Yiddish singers to once again sing these songs that represent a golden era
of Yiddish culture in Soviet Jewish history.’

Album producer, Yale Strom is one of the world’s leading pioneers in the
revival of klezmer music from Central and Eastern Europe from amongst the
Jewish and Roma communities and is the recipient of multiple awards for his
documentary filmmaking. Yale’s work as a ethnographer includes 75 research
expeditions, 14 albums and 9 books, ‘ He’s a gifted photographer and
author, a talented documentary filmmaker and has his own klezmer band…
Strom’s multifaceted career is a wonder ’ – The New York Jewish Week. Yale
Strom has taken care and time to ensure the continuation of Shmuel
Polonski’s vision for his compositions.


www.yalestrom.com
www.hotpstromi.com
www.commonchordsmusic.com
"To compel a man to work for less than a living wage is truly an act of
injustice as to pick his pocket" John A. Ryan (1906)
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