‪Video 1:Semer Ensemble – Live Recording Of A Rescued Musical Treasure [Gorki Studio Я]‬
A Golden Age of Jewish music almost forgotten – the songs captured in 30s’ Berlin by Hirsch Lewin on his Semer label. “Semer Ensemble” brings this amazing music back to life with critically acclaimed concerts throughout Europe in 2012-15.

With a little help of their friends a dream to record this music live in concert came true, so that, 70 years after the Holocaust, the legacy of the Semer label can be passed on to present and future generations.
Alan Bern – piano, accordion, music director

Paul Brody – trumpet

Daniel Kahn – voice, accordion

Mark Kovnatsky – violin

Martin Lillich – basello

Sasha Lurje – voice

Fabian Schnedler – voice, electric guitar

Lorin Sklamberg – voice, accordion


Ben Mandelson – producer

Toshi Rösner – technical director


Images – Luca Jacob

Editing – Rita Couto

Video 2: ‪Sklamberg & the Shepherds Ma Noymar‬
Sklamberg & the Shepherds at ‘Hallenser Jüdischen Kulturtage’ in Germany 2014. 


The course is entitled: Songs of Semer: Yidishe Lider in Berlin, 1933-38
Class starts Apr 7, 7:00-8:30 PM
6 Thursdays: April 7, 14, 21, May 5, 12,19
Tuition:
YIVO Members:$250
Non-members: $325

Join Klezmatics singer and YIVO sound archivist Lorin Sklamberg for a rediscovery of the unbelievably diverse repertoire of Jewish song recorded under the auspices of the Jüdischer Kulturbund in the shadow of Nazi oppression. Yiddish theater and folk songs, religious hymns, German cabaret ditties and early Hebrew ballads as performed by a who’s who of 1930s European Jewish artists for the microphones of Hirsch Lewin’s Semer and associated record labels will be explored, illustrated by rare original recordings.

In anticipation of the release of Alan Bern’s Semer Ensemble CD (Piranha Musik, 2016), featuring contemporary reinterpretations of these musical treasures. Texts and translations will be provided.

Lorin Sklamberg is the sound archivist at YIVO Institue for Jewish Research. Lorin Sklamberg is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning  Yiddish-American roots band the Klezmatics. He has been heard on  innumerable recordings and live shows, solo and in collaboration with such diverse artists as Itzhak Perlman, Jane Siberry, Theodore Bikel, Chava  Alberstein, Ehud Banai, Yoni Rechter, Emmylou Harris, Tracy Grammer,  Neil Sedaka, Natalie Merchant and Tony Kushner.

He has composed and performed for film, dance, stage and circus, and has produced a number of recordings of world and theater music. He also teaches Yiddish song from São Paulo, London, Paris and Weimar to Kiev and St. Petersburg.  His and bandmate Frank London’s programs of Hasidic “spirituals” have resulted in three critically-acclaimed compact discs.

Ongoing collaborations include Saints and Tzadiks, a concert and cd combining Yiddish and Irish songs created together with Dublin-born chanteuse Susan McKeown. Recent projects: contemporary klezmer pioneer Alan Bern’s Semer Label Reloaded, a celebration of Jewish recordings made in Berlin 1933-38, the award-winning Yiddish-Bavarian collaboration Alpen Klezmer with Andrea Pancur and Ilya Shneyveys, and composer Jocelyn Pook’s Drawing Life, a multi-media song cycle commissioned by the Jewish Music Institute of London (JMI). By day Lorin serves as the Sound Archivist of New York’s YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Since the early ’90s, Sklamberg has been co-Director (along with Kapelye’s Henry Sapoznik) of Living Traditions, Inc., a Yiddish folk arts non-profit organization that sponsors the annual KlezKamp, and releases archival CDs of music including rescued recordings of Yiddish radio programs from the 1920s-1950’s.

He has performed under pianist Zalman Mlotek, and appears on a variety of releases such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Remember the Children, Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz, and Moxy Fruvous’ Wood. The late ’90s also found him working on Di Grine Katshke, or The Green Duck, (funded by the New York State Council on the Arts), an album of Yiddish children’s songs. Sklamberg performed material from The Green Duck at the Ashkenaz festival in Toronto in 1997 and 1999.

The class meets at the YIVO Institue for Jewish Research, 15 W. 16th St., New York, New York, 10011. Phone: 212-246-6080

*Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save $21 right now, and more on future classes and public programs tickets. 

For inquiries about this course, contact:
Leah Falk
Manager of Education Programs and Community Engagement
(212) 294-8301 ext. 5167

To contact Lorin Sklamberg:
lsklamberg@yivo.cjh.org