To Romania with love

A special concert with the Orchestra of the State Jewish Theatre, Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz (USA)

The State Jewish Theatre invites you to the concert "To Romania with Love", which takes place on Tuesday 19 May at 19:00, on the TES stage.

The special guests are Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz (USA), artists known internationally for their work on the research and performance of the Jewish musical traditions of Eastern Europe. They are joined by the Orchestra of the State Jewish Theatre, for an evening devoted to cultural dialogue and to the musical heritage of the region.

Yale Strom has been carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in Eastern Europe, among the Jewish communities that remained after the Holocaust, since the early 1980s. His initial interest was klezmer music as played at weddings and at other important moments in community life, documenting the tunes, the performance practices and the stories of the musicians who kept the tradition alive after the devastation of the Holocaust.

In time his research widened to include Roma musicians, who often played alongside Jewish performers. Strom has explored how Jewish and Roma artists exchanged tunes, shared repertoires and influenced one another stylistically, uncovering a rich history of musical dialogue and cultural interconnection between different ethnic groups.

Out of his fieldwork, Strom has published books, produced recordings and made photographic essays that capture both the musicians and the worlds they lived and performed in. He also founded the klezmer/Roma ensemble Hot Pstromi, which has released fifteen albums to date.

Elizabeth Schwartz has been the lead singer of Hot Pstromi since 1996. Her contralto voice, with its distinctive timbre, gives every song a particular depth and intimacy. Classically trained, she sings with stylistic sensitivity and authenticity in several languages, among them Yiddish, Romanian and other languages of Eastern Europe.

Schwartz has often travelled with Yale Strom in Eastern Europe for fieldwork and for meetings with local musical communities, especially in Romania. Her connection with the region is also a personal one: her paternal grandparents came from Iași, a city with a rich Jewish history.

An admirer of the great Romanian singer Maria Tănase, Elizabeth Schwartz brings to her performances a particular emotional intensity and interpretative finesse. Her voice can be heard on every recording the ensemble has Hot Pstromi released on Arc Music.

Tickets for this concert are available through mySTAGE.