Dear friends, I’m making a big festival! You can start bringing in your ideas, announced Gołda Tencer, at that time the General Director of the Shalom Foundation and actress and director of the Jewish Theater in Warsaw. It happened during the play “The Townhouse on Nalewki Street” intermission at the beginning of 2004, hence, long before anyone could think that the Jewish Theater might be gone from Grzybowski Square… And already in mid-October of the same year, Grzybowski Square was filled with a colorful crowd of artists and guests of the 1^st Jewish Culture Festival Singer’s Warsaw. Over time, the four Festival days expanded into nine days, and instead of 60, each year we have about 150 events… Our Festival has attracted partners, patrons, sponsors, own artists, and a loyal audience. Our wonderful audience, artists, and institutions with whom we cooperate have been creating Singer’s Warsaw for the past 20 years!

This year, in keeping with the tradition of the Festival, music, and theater will dominate the venue: so you are going to enjoy big outdoor concerts, chamber concerts, and recitals.  There will also be plenty of theatrical premieres and screenings of well-known plays, small theatrical forms, or performance readings. This year’s program will also include meetings dedicated to literature, music, and history, film screenings, as well as lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and city walks.

Singer’s Warsaw Festival features the Jewish culture at its best. We offer to present our audience with numerous outstanding artists, writers, musicians, and their innovative projects. In addition, our audience has a chance to learn about Jewish history, tradition, and customs. We talk to and host conversations with experts, historians, researchers, and scientists, and provide the ground for a discussion, view, and expertise sharing.

Our Festival brings together all people who find the world of Yiddish an important element of the Polish-Jewish heritage.

While we are still working on the detailed program of the Festival, we are sure that everyone is probably curious about the events that we will be able to attend together, so today we present a short preview, a guide to this year’s Festival:

THE JEWISH THEATRE, 35 Senatorska Street / The Club of the Command of Garrison in Warsaw, 141a Niepodległości Ave.

Our closest and most nearby stages, the Summer Stage and the Szymon Szurmiej Small Stage located at 35 Senatorska Street and belonging to the Festival’s permanent partner and host of the venue, the Jewish Theater, will become the venue for small theatrical forms, recitals, and concerts, as well as meetings with Festival guests. This year’s performances will include the hit play “Rehab. All the Battles of Amy Winehouse” based on the script written and directed by Karolina Kirsz, staged for the first time on the 55^th anniversary of the events of March ’68, “Travelers” by Paweł Mossakowski, directed by Gosia Dębska, and prepared for the 80^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, “Ghetto Songs” based on a script written and directed by Gołda Tencer. Here you will also be able to attend a performance reading of works by Irit Amiel, directed by Karolina Kowalczyk, and watch a cabaret performed by Jewish Theater artists. Musical experience, in turn, will be provided by, among others: Daniel Kahn (Germany), Christian Dawid (Germany), Jake Shulman-Ment (USA), Thomas Handzel (Germany), Izabela Szafrańska, Siostry Rajfer (Israel), Aleksandra Idkowska, Monika Chrząstowska, and Genady Iskchakov. The summer stage will also feature artists from Italy, Paola Quagliata and the Fandujo band: Fruzsina László, Pierpaolo Palazzo, Germán Montes de Oca who will present an original blend of Sephardi music, Arbëreshë and traditional songs of southern Italy, all reinterpreted through different styles, from classical to jazz music.

This will also be the venue of one of the most warmly received events prepared every year by the Festival’s director and creator, Gołda Tencer, which is “In Mama Sonia’s Kitchen.”

On the bigger stages of the Jewish Theater you will, of course, have a chance to see wonderful premiere performances: “Dus buch fyn Gan Ejdn / The Book of Paradise” based on the work written by Icyk Manger, directed by Damian Josef Necia; a musical performance with original compositions created by Hadrian Filip Tabęcki, with live music, that is “Yentl” by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Leah Napolin, directed by Robert Talarczyk, based on a short story by the Nobel Prize winner; a metaphysical play, inspired by the lives of great Poles of Jewish origin “Madagascar” based on the text written by Magdalena Drab and directed by Gosia Dębska, and a “circus-punk musical about insomnia and the dangers of reading,” i.e. “Circus Kafka” based on Remigiusz Grzela’s book “Franz K’s Luggage. The Journey That Never Happened,” directed by Michał Walczak.

THE NATIONAL OPERA HOUSE, 1 Teatralny Sq.

It is a place that sometimes helps us to surprise you. And so, we hope, will happen this time as well. This year it will not be an artistic surprise but we will open our Festival here for the first time. And as usual, there is so much to look forward to! You will have the opportunity to enjoy the duo of great voices and wonderful, versatile female artists: Noa&AMJ, a concert by Achinoam Nini, with a guest appearance by one of Poland’s most famous and original singers, composers, and songwriters, Anna Maria Jopek. Noa, a well-known and talented Israeli singer, composer, and poet whose roots are in Yemen and Israel, and whose life paths have also led her across the United States, has nearly 20 albums to her credit and has already shared the stage with such legends as Stevie Wonder, Andrea Bocelli and Sting during her 30-plus years on the scene.

THE NOŻYK SYNAGOGUE, 6 Twarda St.

Here we will once again have the honor of organizing a festive Havdalah and a cantorial concert; this year (for the first time!) the concert will be closing the Festival. The final concert at the Synagogue will feature a prominent Israeli cantors Chaim Stern and Israel Nachman with accompaniment by Eytan Sobol.

In addition to events referring to the extraordinary atmosphere of the place, the last and only of Warsaw’s synagogues that not only survived World War II but is still open and functioning today, you will also have the chance to enjoy concerts of secular music, including a chamber concert featuring an exceptional piece by Piotr Moss, “ELEGIA III for viola and piano,” and compositions by Max Bruch, performed by pianist Anna Prabucka-Firlej and viola player Krzysztof Komendarek-Tymendorf. Jazz double bassist Paweł Pańta will present his first original album “Youth” with his works juxtaposed with themes composed by John Williams (from the movie “Schindler’s List”), Kurylewicz, Chopin, or Moniuszko, and the concert will also feature pianist Stanisław Pańta and percussionists Patryk Dobosz and Tymoteusz Papior. The synagogue will open its doors to visitors, and offer an opportunity to meet the rabbi and ask him “a hundred questions.”

GRZYBOWSKI SQUARE

During the jubilee 20^th edition of Singer’s Warsaw Festival, we simply must be present in the place we, and not only we, miss. We will be there! As per tradition, on Festival Friday, we will set up a large table on Grzybowski Square and invite residents of Warsaw, and others, to a Shabbat dinner. And after the festive Shabbat Shalom evening, the square will become a venue for a big outdoor concert, featuring the amazing Israeli group Light in Babylon. Metehan Ciftci, Michal Elia Kamal, Julien Demarque, Priam Arnoux, and Stuart Dickson will transport us to the world of music of the Eastern Mediterranean, in which, in addition to sounds inspired by the heritage of culturally rich Turkish Istanbul, you may catch sounds characteristic of the musical tradition of Sephardic Jews. Everything will be colorful, cosmopolitan, energetic, and sometimes lyrical, exactly as it should be on Grzybowski Square in Warsaw!

Light in Babylon

TEATR KWADRAT, 138 Marszałkowska St.

Also this year, thanks to the hospitality of the management of the Kwadrat Theater, our former neighbors from across Marszałkowska Street, we will be present with our plays on the friendly stage! The audience is going to see artists who need no introduction. One of the most outstanding Polish jazz pianists, Leszek Możdżer, and the one and only Aga Zaryan, who celebrated 20 years of artistic work last year, will present their concerts. We will also host Mark Eliyahu, a Dagestani-born Israeli musician who lived for some time in the Azerbaijani city of Baku and is a composer of, among others, film music, a sound wizard who plays the kamancheh instrument that derives from the Middle Eastern tradition. In turn, an unforgettable evening of music and humor will be a treat prepared by Janusz Tencer, who this year will present a program entitled “A Mess in the Carpenter’s Shop” together with his friends from the Mazl Tow group.

AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM, 7/9 Próżna St.

It is with equal pleasure that we invite you to our next favorite place, the Austrian Cultural Forum, which will host Festival meetings, lectures (including the one given by Andrzej Krakowski), exhibitions, and film screenings (among others, thanks to the cooperation with Centre Simon Wiesenthal Europe, our audience will have the opportunity to watch two productions that won Oscar award for the best documentary: “Genocide” (Oscar 1981) and “The Long Way Home” (Oscar 1988). The Forum will also host meetings of the Jewish Literary Salon held by Remigiusz Grzela, as well as meetings of the Jewish Culture Enthusiasts Club. The series Masters Read will offer you a chance to listen to the best Jewish prose in the best interpretations of famous Polish actors: Anna Seniuk and Ewa Ziętek. Among many outstanding people who will be invited to the Austrian Cultural Forum for discussions will be witnesses of history, Anna Bando (President of the Polish Society of the Righteous Among the Nations), Marian Kalwary (President of the Association of Jewish Veterans and Victims of World War II) and Francois Kersaudy, prominent French historian of World War II.

YIDDISH CULTURAL CENTER, 15 Andersa St.

This year again we will invite the public to the Yiddish Cultural Center, a unique place on the cultural and educational map of Warsaw. Here you will learn about the latest developments in Polish Yiddish studies during debates and academic sessions. You will hear what Yiddish sounds like in contemporary electronic music and a performative radio play based on classical Jewish literature. The end of summer is also the beginning of the plum season, so we will invite you to make eingemachts, i.e. jam and other plum preserves. Together we will create Yiddish zines and three-dimensional paintings based on the fairy tales of the Festival’s patron, Isaac Bashevis Singer.

The Shalom Foundation is inviting everyone to the joint commemoration of the 18^th International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the UN General Assembly on 1 November 2005. During that day the memory of Jewish victims murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II is honored worldwide.

In Poland, this day is particularly special, and its tragic aspect is even more stressed by the fact that it is commemorated on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

MAIN COMMEMORATIONS

On this special, contemplative day, just as every year, we will meet at 13:00 at the Monument for the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes.

During the ceremony, we will take part in an ecumenical prayer and witness the official laying of wreaths.

Be with us on this day.

ACCOMPANYING EVENTS

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day celebrations on 27 January will also include:

– the journey of a vintage tram with the Star of David that will pass through the streets in the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto,

– the “Light of Remembrance”, a campaign during which everyone can light a candle for the murdered and place it in the window at 18:00 [PL].

On this day, we are accompanied by the shadows of those who were murdered in the ghettos, killed in gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau, tracked down in forest hideouts, and condemned to slave labor and death. Where are their graves? In the air filled with the smoke of the crematorium, in a handful of ashes, in a lump of sand sifting through time. On 27 January, the flame of the candles will save the memory. Let’s do everything to prevent the crime born of hatred that ravages hearts and minds from repeating ever again. Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day of faith in a new heaven spread out over the Earth, created for people’s happiness. Let’s light candles in our windows on 27 January at 6 pm. Gołda Tencer

Organizers:

Shalom Foundation, Stołeczna Estrada

Co-organizers:

Jewish Theater Estera Rachel and Ida Kamiński – Center for Yiddish Culture

Tramwaje Warszawskie Sp. Zoo.

We wish all our Friends happy Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year. We hope that celebration of those holidays will be a special time full of peace, joy and love.

Shalom Foundation team

We are very happy to announce that the jubilee, 20th edition of Singer’s Warsaw Jewish Culture Festival will take place on August 26 – September 3, 2023.

Stay with us!

Dear Friends,

happy and sweet New Year 5783!

We hope we all be enetered in the Book of Life for a new good year!

The team of the Shalom Foundation

Singer’s Warsaw Festival in Radzymin

Concert: “The Colors of Jewish Music” – Hebrew, Sephardic, and Yiddish songs | Anna Riveiro, Michał Pindakiewicz

Line-up: Anna Riveiro (vocal, guitar, selection and translation of the pieces, concert’s script), Michał Pindakiewicz (guitar, arrangement)

It is a remarkable program presenting the centuries-old Jewish musical tradition. From old Hebrew songs, mainly religious, through secular Sephardic music, to the traditional Yiddish repertoire. It is a musical tale of Jewish life, the birthplace notwithstanding. We will hear songs that accompanied people in different situations, on normal days and holidays: prayers, love songs, wedding songs, and lullabies. All are an expression of the Jewish soul…

Anna Riveiro, charismatic vocalist, cantor soloist, voice coach, guitarist, and music producer, who sings in many languages, performing music from different epochs, traditions, and countries.  She regularly performs in Poland and other parts of the world, and cooperates with outstanding soloists and bands. Riveiro performed in Israel, Mexico, Spain, France, England, Germany, Italy, and other countries. Her interpretations of Sephardic songs are considered as model in the UNESCO program concerning languages threatened by extinction.

Michał Pindakiewicz – classical guitar virtuoso, guitarist with comprehensive musical interests, arranger, and composer. Graduate of Warsaw’s University of Music and winner of international guitar competitions. Performed on multiple stages in Poland, Czechia, Germany, Spain, and Mexico. Appears with various bands and musicians, classical, jazz, and folk.

The Municipal F. Chopin Hall in Radzymin 15 Konstytucji 3 Maja St.

Free admission

Organized in cooperation with the Town and Municipality Hall in Radzymin and the Public Library of the Town and Municipality of Radzymin

Move On Together Israeli Way – israeli movement techniques workshops: Gaga/people + Research (additional workshop) – run by: Kornelia Lech |PL| and  Erez Zohar |IL|

Gaga/people is the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin throughout many years, parallel to his work as a choreographer and the former artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company. Gaga/people classes offer a framework for users to connect to their bodies and imaginations, experience physical sensations, improve their flexibility and stamina, exercise their agility and explosive power, and enjoy the pleasure of movement in a welcoming, accepting atmosphere. Gaga/people classes are open to people ages 16+, regardless of their background in dance.

Research Workshop led by Kornelia and Erez to deepen movement awareness through improvisation, and interpretation of artistic creation Polarized.

Kornelia Maria Tamara Lech – Artist, dancer, choreographer, teacher of Gaga Movement Language. She comes from Murowana Goślina near Poznań. A graduate of the Ballet School in Poznań. In 2010, she started her career at the Polish Dance Theater in Poznań, and in 2017 she was the first Polish woman to join the Batsheva Dance Company – The Young Ensemble. She was then invited as a guest artist to  the Batsheva Dance Company to participate in Ohad Naharin’s performance entitled “Last Work”. Currently, she lives in Tel-Aviv as a freelance artist. Creating her own world with her partner Erez Zohar, they’re just after the new premier of Polarized.

Erez Zohar – Erez Zohar started his dance training as a member of local companies including Hora Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Tap Dance Company, and he received several Sharett scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation as well as a grant from the Ministry of Culture and Education. A graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance’s high school, he joined the Batsheva Ensemble in 2002 and danced with Batsheva Dance Company from 2005-2012, rejoining the troupe from 2017-2019. At Batsheva, he performed in repertory by Ohad Naharin, Sharon Eyal, and Yasmeen Godder , Marlene Monteiro Freitas and premiered his own choreography in several Batsheva Dancers Create programs. Erez began teaching Gaga in 2003 and has taught throughout Israel and around the world for the last 19 years  since 2012 he stages Ohad Naharin works around the world . He is currently an independent dancer and creator as well as a certified therapist in the Ilan Lev method.

The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Okólnik 2 St., rhythmics room

Duration: Gaga/people 1 hour, Research about 2 hours

Charge admission – https://competit.pl/w/2488/

Note: admission from the age 16

Supporting event organized by Move On Together Israeli Way in cooperation with Nevatim – Jewish Agency in Berlin and the Hillel Polska Foundation

Move On Together Israeli Way – israeli movement techniques workshops: Gaga/people – run by: Kornelia Lech |PL| and Erez Zohar |IL|

Gaga/people is the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin throughout many years, parallel to his work as a choreographer and the former artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company. Gaga/people classes offer a framework for users to connect to their bodies and imaginations, experience physical sensations, improve their flexibility and stamina, exercise their agility and explosive power, and enjoy the pleasure of movement in a welcoming, accepting atmosphere. Gaga/people classes are open to people ages 16+, regardless of their background in dance.

Kornelia Maria Tamara Lech – Artist, dancer, choreographer, teacher of Gaga Movement Language. She comes from Murowana Goślina near Poznań. A graduate of the Ballet School in Poznań. In 2010, she started her career at the Polish Dance Theater in Poznań, and in 2017 she was the first Polish woman to join the Batsheva Dance Company – The Young Ensemble. She was then invited as a guest artist to  the Batsheva Dance Company to participate in Ohad Naharin’s performance entitled “Last Work”. Currently, she lives in Tel-Aviv as a freelance artist. Creating her own world with her partner Erez Zohar, they’re just after the new premier of Polarized.

Erez Zohar – Erez Zohar started his dance training as a member of local companies including Hora Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Tap Dance Company, and he received several Sharett scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation as well as a grant from the Ministry of Culture and Education. A graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance’s high school, he joined the Batsheva Ensemble in 2002 and danced with Batsheva Dance Company from 2005-2012, rejoining the troupe from 2017-2019. At Batsheva, he performed in repertory by Ohad Naharin, Sharon Eyal, and Yasmeen Godder , Marlene Monteiro Freitas and premiered his own choreography in several Batsheva Dancers Create programs. Erez began teaching Gaga in 2003 and has taught throughout Israel and around the world for the last 19 years  since 2012 he stages Ohad Naharin works around the world . He is currently an independent dancer and creator as well as a certified therapist in the Ilan Lev method.

The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Okólnik 2 St., rhythmics room

Duration: about 1 hour

Charge admission – https://competit.pl/w/2488/

Note: admission from the age 16

Supporting event organized by Move On Together Israeli Way in cooperation with Nevatim – Jewish Agency in Berlin and the Hillel Polska Foundation

Move On Together Israeli Way – israeli movement techniques workshops: Movement – run by: Patrycja Zasławska and Eryk Pacek |PL|

Movement inspired by Ido Portal. We combine our own experience, the Ido Portal method, elements of the Feldenkrais method and contemporary dance and call it “creative PE”. Activities perfect for everyone who wants to feel the joy of movement.

Patrycja Zasławska – Graduate of Medical University in Wrocław, certified Ashtanga yoga teacher. She’s interested in body physiology, anatomy and sports, frequent visits in Israel lead her to movement and dance. In 2021 she spent semester in Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Comany Dance Journey learning more abour Israeli methods. She also completed Level 1 Animal Flow course. Loves to spend her time surronded by people that she can share her passion.

Eryk Pacek – Graduate of Ballet school in Poznań. He gathered his professional experience in “Śląsk” Song and Dance Ensemble, and twice in Israel. He spend semester in Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company Dance Journey, where he was deepening his knowledge abot contemprary dance and improvisation.

The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Okólnik 2 St., rhythmics room

Duration: about 2 hours

Charge admission – https://competit.pl/w/2488/

Supporting event organized by Move On Together Israeli Way in cooperation with Nevatim – Jewish Agency in Berlin and the Hillel Polska Foundation