Dream come true: Jewish Culture Festival Singer’s Warsaw. For the 20th time!

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.