OPENING NIGHT of the 28^th Jewish Music Festival, March 2 - 12,

in Berkeley and San Francisco

The Future of Jewish Music in Poland with Polesye & Shofar

 

Multimedia introduction by Ruth Ellen Gruber

 

Thrust Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley

 

Tickets: www.jewishmusicfestival.org / 800-838-3006 / Info: 510-848-0237, x126

 

Co-presented with the Polish Cultural Institute New York. Co-sponsored by the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture,
in association with the Israel Center (SF), the Consulate of Israel (SF) and the Consulate of Poland (LA).

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7:00 pm: Pre-concert slide show / discussion with Ruth Ellen Gruber, Recipient of Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, September, 2011 for her press coverage of the Solidarity movement.

8:00 pm: Concert: Direct from Poland: Shofar This mix of Hasidic, cantorial nigunim (melodies) and free jazz puts a Polish twist on Jewish music. The band consists of three leading Polish musicians: Mikołaj Trzaska (saxophone, bass clarinet), Raphael Rogiński (electric guitar) and Macio Moretti (drums).

 

Shofar’s founder Raphael Rogiński began playing electric guitar at the age of thirteen. He received both jazz and classical musical training and supplemented his education with studies of musicology and ethnomusicology. Mikołaj Trzaska is a saxophonist, bass clarinetist, composer, and one of the founders of the "yass" scene in Poland (yass being a combination of new wave, free jazz, modern rock, and poetry). In 1993 he founded the group ŁOSKOT (Clatter). He has recorded more than thirty albums, half of them his own self-composed projects. Considered one of Poland’s top jazz musicians. Macio Moretti is a performer, composer, producer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist.. His broad spectrum of musical interests covers such diverse areas as grind/punk, twisted country-and-western, improv, psychedelic and “pseudo-jazz”. In 2010, Moretti received the “Passport” award from the influential Polish news weekly, Polityka.

 

With:

 

Polesye - Jewish Folksongs from the Shtetl - Direct from Poland and Israel: Polesye was the ancient cradle of the Slavic peoples and a center of Hasidism. This unique project is inspired by a pre-War Jewish folksinger born in this multicultural region. Vocalist Olga Mieleszczuk, accompanied by Israeli clarinetist and guitarist Ittai Bunnun, violin Cookie Segelstein and accordion / tsimbl Josh Horowitz.

 

Olga Mieleszczuk is a singer, accordion player and researcher of Eastern European musical folklore and currently spends her time between Warsaw and Jerusalem. She studied music at the Frederick Chopin University of Music and has a Master’s degree in the Anthropology of Culture from Warsaw University. Her creative work focuses on Ashkenazi Jewish music especially from borderland regions of Galicia and Polesye. Ittai Binnun plays with renowned Israeli artists who specialize in world music; and is a master of clarinet, saxophone, ney, zurna, duduk, dijeridoo, baglama, guitar saz and more. He also composes for theater and film. Cookie Siegelstein (violin) and Josh Horowitz (accordion and tsimbl) are members of the renowned groups Veretski Pass and Budowitz.