ITJM

“Yehi Or – Let There Be Light”

Dear friends of music,

the days grow shorter, the light fades earlier. That is precisely when the International Days of Jewish Music begin. Their motto this year is the first command of creation in the Hebrew Bible: “Yehi Or – Let There Be Light”. It stands at the beginning of everything. What fades outside lights up in the music.

For five days we follow that light through the history of Jewish music. It begins on Usedom, where Norman Lebrecht, one of the most influential music writers at work today, and Jascha Nemtsov, the only holder of a chair in Jewish music history in Europe, talk about Leonard Cohen, who carried biblical images into pop culture; the celebrated American musician Paul Brody brings Cohen to life on his trumpet. With him, the following day, young people in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ask about origin, belonging and prejudice – told in sixty seconds. The light reaches Essen and a synagogue the National Socialists set ablaze in 1938; today the Mentsh United ensemble of Disko Partizani founder Shantel plays there. In Dresden, Boney M.’s world hit “Rivers of Babylon” leads back to Psalm 137 and to Salamone Rossi, brought to life by Le Bois Chantant and Alberto de Campo. And it ends in Berlin, where Charlotte Melkonian, winner of the Usedom Music Prize at only thirteen, and Jascha Nemtsov play composers whose lives were also marked by persecution.

At the International Days of Jewish Music, Jewish music is nothing for the museum. It is played, improvised, danced and passed on – by people who keep telling their story, to people who do not yet know it or want to know it better.

Our thanks go to the Bundesministerium des Innern (BMI – Federal Ministry of the Interior), the Sebastian Cobler Stiftung für Bürgerrechte, the Elisabeth Selbert Fonds (ESF), JEWLIF – Jüdisches Leben in Europa e. V., Dr. med. Dorothee Freudenberg and many others for their support.

Anyone who follows this week will hear and see familiar music in an entirely new light at the end of it.

Thomas Hummel
Artistic Director of the Usedomer Musikfestival

Rolf Seelige-Steinhoff
Chairman of the supporters’ association Usedomer Musikfreunde e. V.