Live musical performances and a panel conversation celebrate the Library’s acquisition of rare sheet music and manuscripts from the legendary New York radio station WEVD.

In-person registration for this event has sold out, but livestream tickets are still available. A limited number of standby tickets may be available on the night of the event.

Featuring:

• Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett


• Hankus Netsky


• Henry Sapoznik


• Zalmen Mlotek

and more

It has been said that WEVD was the soundtrack of Jewish New York for much of the 20th century. Founded in 1927, the city’s most popular Yiddish radio station billed itself as “the station that speaks your language.” WEVD’s original programming featured performances of Yiddish folk and theater music, concert and choral music, cantorials, Hassidic chant, klezmer, and more, much of it composed by its staff of composers and arrangers such as Joseph Rumshinsky, Alexander Olshanetsky, Sholom Secunda, Sam Medoff, Joe Garnett, and Abraham Ellstein.

This year the station’s massive music library, once nearly lost and destroyed, assumes its new home at the Library as the David and Ina Shiff WEVD Music Collection. To mark the occasion, musicians will perform new arrangements from selected pieces, and artists and scholars will discuss the enduring relevance of the station’s history and the creative output that it helped produce.

Presented in cooperation with the National Yiddish Theatre/Folksbiene.

This program is part of the Celebrate 350 Lecture series, a permanent tribute to the anniversary of the arrival of Jews in New York City.

To join the event in person | Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins. For LIVE from NYPL events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment; we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Booked seats that have not been claimed will be released shortly before start time, and seats may become available then. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.

To join the livestream | A livestream of this event will be available on the NYPL event page. To receive an email reminder shortly in advance of the event, please be sure to register! If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University. She is currently the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt), The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (with Jonathan Karp), and Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (with Jeffrey Shandler), among others.

She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, received the Mlotek Prize for Yiddish and Yiddish Culture, honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Haifa, and Indiana University, the 2015 Marshall Sklare Award for her contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry, and was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on Advisory Boards for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, and Jewish Museum Berlin, and advises on museum and exhibition projects in Lithuania, Belarus, Albania, New Zealand, Israel, and the United States.

A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist, Hankus Netsky is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department and founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, an internationally renowned Yiddish music ensemble. He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television, collaborated closely with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Theodore Bikel, and Robert Brustein, and produced numerous recordings, including ten by the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has also recorded with Ran Blake, Marty Ehrlich, Rosalie Gerut, Linda J. Chase, Theodore Bikel, Margot Leverett, and Cantor Jeff Warschauer. He received the Yosl Mlotek Award and a “Forward Fifty” award for his role in the resurgence of traditional Eastern European Jewish ethnic musical culture.

Henry Sapoznik is a five-time Grammy nominated record and radio producer, banjoist, author, ethnomusicologist in the fields of Yiddish and American popular and traditional music. A child of Holocaust survivors and the product of an Orthodox yeshiva education, Sapoznik pioneered the revival of klezmer music and in 1985 founded KlezKamp, the first program designed to teach traditional Yiddish folk arts. Sapoznik received the 2002 Peabody award for his 13-part NPR series The Yiddish Radio Project, whose collection of over 5,000 broadcasts is in the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. Sapoznik's upcoming book is called The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City.

Zalmen Mlotek is an internationally acclaimed authority on Yiddish folk and theater music. His vision as the Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene brought the award-winning and critically acclaimed Fidler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish), directed by Joel Grey, to New York, for which he serves as musical director and conductor. He is the co-creator of Those Were The Days, the first bilingual musical on Broadway, nominated for two Tony awards as well as the Drama Desk nominated On Second Avenue, and the Drama Desk nominated The Golden Land, which toured under the sponsorship of Leonard Bernstein, one of Mlotek's most notable mentors. Mlotek's devotion to restoring Yiddish vibrancy launched classics including the world premiere of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yentl in Yiddish, the Yiddish version of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance Di Yam Gazlonim, and the 1923 Rumshinsky operetta, The Golden Bride. Mlotek is a sought after collaborator for many recordings, arrangements and projects in concert, television and film, including consulting for PBS' The Thomashefskys by Michael Tilkson-Thomas and Itzhak Perlman: In The Fiddler's House. His recent musical, Amid Falling Walls (Tsvishn Falndike Vent), was a collaboration with his son Avram, featuring songs created in the ghetto camps and cabarets of World War II, many from his mother's collection, We Are Here, the first ever English translated collection of Yiddish Holocaust songs. During his tenure at the NYTF, the theatre company has been nominated for over ten Drama Desk Awards, four Lucille Lortel Awards, and three Tony Awards. In 2015, he was listed as one of the Forward 50 by The Forward, which features American Jews who have had a profound impact on the American Jewish community.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

CONNECT

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Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett © Chuck Fishman
Courtesy Hankus Netsky
Courtesy Henry Sapoznik
Courtesy Zalmen Mlotek