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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).

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