Music
Virtual Tenement Concert – New York in Yiddish Song: In A Dark Blue Night
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Back by popular demand! We partnered up again with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research for a night exploring Jewish immigrant New York City of yesteryear, this time celebrating the release of Pulitzer Prize-finalist Alex Weiser’s new album, in a dark blue night.
A love letter to New York City, in a dark blue night features acclaimed singer Annie Rosen with a seven-piece chamber ensemble and comprises two song cycles that explore Jewish immigrant New York City. The first cycle, in a dark blue night, features five settings of Yiddish poetry written by newly arrived immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Coney Island Days follows and sets to music words from an oral history interview with Weiser’s grandmother about childhood in the bilingual immigrant world of Coney Island in the 1930s and ‘40s.
Musical performances from inside our recreated 1870s saloon interweave songs from Weiser’s album with Yiddish songs of the past that explore the Jewish immigrant experience. From a lullaby imagining America as heaven and a hymn to the Statue of Liberty to ballads of sweatshop labor and inequality, the musical selections will bring a diversity of experiences from the historic Jewish Lower East Side to life.
The concert features an introduction and historical commentary by Alex Weiser in conversation with Tenement Museum President Annie Polland, and musical performances by singer Annie Rosen and pianist Jason Wirth.
