SINGER’S WARSAW FESTIVAL OF JEWISH CULTURE COMING TO NEW YORK FOR TWO-DAY SIDEBAR NOV 24 &25
ACCLAIMED THEATER ARTIST MONIKA CHRZASTOWSKA WILL APPEAR IN MANHATTAN NOV 25
JAZZ VIRTUOSOS ADAM MAKOWICZ & KRZYSZTOF MEDYNA TO APPEAR IN BROOKLYN NOV 24
(November 4, 2024) The internationally acclaimed Singer’s Warsaw Festival of
Jewish Culture brings three of Poland’s leading music and theater artists to New
York on Sunday and Monday November 24 & 25, in a unique sidebar of the
Festival’s 21 st annual edition, which ran this past summer in Warsaw. The Festival is
organized by the Shalom Foundation, founded and directed by the Yiddish theater
icon, Golda Tencer.
Concert great Adam Makowicz and the jazz innovator Krzysztof Medyna offer an
evening of daring jazz explorations of the music of renowned Jewish composers at
the Polish & Slavic Center Concert Hall, 177 Kent Street in Greenpoint Brooklyn, on
Sunday November 24, at 7pm. Free admission, to reserve e-mail claudian@polishslaviccenter.org
On Monday November 25, at 7pm, leading Warsaw actress Monika Chrzastowska
performs a concert of the music of Wiera Gran, the legendary muse of pre-War and
wartime Warsaw, at the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, 233 Madison
Avenue (at 37 th Street).
Free admission, to reserve
https://forms.gle/gy38MuC2E4qJqm9n8
Chrzaskowska has played many notable roles with Warsaw’s Jewish Theatre. In a
unique cabaret-style performance Chrzastowkska will evoke the spirit of the singer
and actress Wiera Gran, who famously entered the Warsaw Ghetto to be reunited
with her family, and where she became a revered fixture at the Sztuka Café.
Accompanying Chrzaskowska are Bartozzi Wojciechowski on the bass,
Franciszek Wajdzik on piano, and Robert Seniuta on violin.
The internationally acclaimed pianist and composer Adam Makowicz, who is
celebrated equally for his work in jazz and classical music, has toured
internationally, and is also known for his cross-cultural performances and
compositions. Among his 30 albums are several that joyously celebrate the music of
American Jews such as George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers and
Jerome Kern. Many of his unique arrangements of this music will be re-interpreted
with the New York-based Krzysztof Medyna, a celebrated saxophonist and composer,
who is the co-founder of the popular bands Breakwater and Komeda Project.
Presenting more than 100 music, theater, literature and the visual arts events, the
21 st annual Singer’s Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture, ran from August 24 to
September 1 in venues big and small across Warsaw, especially in neighborhoods
where Warsaw’s pre-War Jewish populations resided. (After New York, Warsaw
claimed the world’s largest Jewish population before WWII.)
The largest European festival of its kind to celebrate Yiddish culture at the nexus of
Jewish history and modernity, the Festival is named after Isaac Bashevis Singer
(1903 to 1991), the Nobel Award-winning Jewish-American writer who wrote almost
exclusively in Yiddish. Born in Leoncin Poland and raised as a boy in Warsaw,
Singer lived most of his adult life in New York, where he emigrated in 1935.
The two events this month will mark the third time the Shalom Foundation
(www.shalom.org.pl) has presented the IB Singer’s New York Jewish Culture
Festival. The stated aim of the Foundation is to present an annual sidebar in New
York to deepen its debt to Singer and to solidify the linkages between Poland and
New York.
This project is financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage’s Fund for
the Promotion of Culture. The event partners are Golden Land Concerts &
Connections (New York); the Polish & Slavic Center (New York); the Consulate
General of the Republic of Poland in New York; The Polish Cultural Institute (New
York); and the Esther Rachel and Ida Kaminska Jewish Theatre, home of the Center
of Yiddish Culture (Warsaw).