National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene Announces Autumn Songs

National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) today announced the cast and creative team for Autumn Songs, a new concert set to stream November 7th on Folksbiene! LIVE. Singer Theresa Tova leads the performance with support from Fern Lindzon (vocals, piano) and David Woodhead (vocals, guitar, bass). The event is fully virtual and will be presented free of charge through NYTF’s Folksbiene! LIVE platform.

Featuring music from the Broadway musical stage to concert and jazz venues around the world, Autumn Songs will offer up stunning performances of some of Tova’s favorite songs— including Yiddish classics and new translations of popular songs, all presented with English supertitles.

“As an actress, I’ve spent most of my life pretending to be something I’m not,” Tova said. “I’m a second-generation daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors. In order to survive, my mother had to hide who she was — but as a Yiddish diva, I can sing loudly and tell the world.”

One of the most versatile performers in Canada, Theresa Tova is an award-winning actor, writer and singer who is also at home in TV and film with her latest roles in Akilla’s Escape and Pretty Hard Cases. Tova wrote the award-winning musicals Still The Night, The Jewish Radio Hour, and co-wrote Bella: The Colour of Love with Mary Kerr.

Planet Jazz describes Parisian-born Tova as a “towering, pan-cultural jazz-cabaret diva.” The Toronto Star called her "an artist Canadians should celebrate.”

From the Broadway musical stage to concert and jazz venues around the world, the Yiddish Diva Tova has three critically acclaimed CDs: Telling Stories, Tova Live at the Top O’ The Senator, and You Ask Me Why: Tova Sings Beyle. Moving effortlessly between English and Yiddish, she visits composers of the Great American Songbook, songs by NEA Award-winning poet Beyle Schaechter Gottesman, and old-world favorites.

JUNO Award nominee Fern Lindzon is a multi-faceted pianist, vocalist, and arranger. Fern possesses a technique WholeNote Magazine called “breathtakingly beautiful,” respected jazz critic Mark Miller wrote “is secure in her sense of herself, her art, and her craft,” New Canadian Music described as “one of the most adventurous and accomplished vocalists, pianists, and songwriters on the T.O. jazz scene,” and Montreal critic Irwin Block lauded as “a rare and fascinating talent.”

Fern’s three CDs move comfortably and creatively through a highly-personal repertoire of her own arrangements of jazz standards, contemporary Israeli and Yiddish music and original compositions. Her second CD, Two Kites, received a JUNO Nomination as Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. Fern has also been an active member of several klezmer bands, composes and performs silent film scores, and is a Musical Director for live theatrical productions. Fernlindzon.com

Truly an explorer of wide musical territories, David Woodhead's melodic and subtle approach applies not just to his well-known electric bass style but to his writing and other instrumental work as well. His name appears on some 350 recording projects, and he’s worked with many influential artists including Perth County Conspiracy, Stan Rogers, Oliver Schroer, Gil Scott-Heron, and David Sanborn. His live gigs have included working with Malagasy guitarist Donné Roberts, classical-folk fusioneers Ensemble Polaris, and veteran jazzers Manteca, as well as touring internationally with master songwriter James Keelaghan.

David has taught at the Folk Alliance International Conference (Kansas City), Haliburton Winter Folk Camp, the Goderich Celtic College and Ontario’s The Woods. His Confabulation ensemble has a more rambunctious nature, while Oriana is focused on a folk-jazz chamber music approach, and after a 2016 residency at the Banff Centre, he completed his third and most recent CD, Tunnels and Visions.

Autumn Songs features sound, audio/visual recording and mixing by David Woodhead and translations by Hindy Noskek Abelson. Tova gives special thanks to Dorothy Schoichet z’’l, for welcoming the performers into her home, and to Bela Schaechter Gottesman z’’l, for her mentorship and friendship.

Fresh from the stellar success of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, which won multiple honors including a 2019 Drama Desk Award, NYTF will present Autumn Songs in Yiddish, with English subtitles. The fully-virtual event can be accessed for free through NYTF’s Folksbiene! LIVE platform. Visit nytf.org/live to view the performance, and contact (212) 655-7653 for all other inquiries.

View Folksbiene! LIVE events at any time from anywhere with NYTF’s new on-demand video library of virtual events — featuring unforgettable musical performances, exclusive interviews, instructive lessons, and more. The library is available at nytf.org/on-demand.

The 107th Season Ahead

ESN - Songs from the Kitchen, Chanukah edition - November 28th

A celebration of Jewish food through song and cooking demonstrations created by Frank London and Lorin Sklamberg of the Grammy Award-winning Klezmatics and Yiddish Diva, Adrienne Cooper z"l. Frank and Lorin will be joined for this special Chanukah edition by Adrienne's daughter, Sarah Gordon, accompanied by special guests. ESN will be available for on demand streaming beginning the first night of Chanukah, November 28th, 2021, and will be free to watch.

Ale Fenster Tsu Der Zun (All the Windows Face the Sun) - Coming in December

The next virtual installment of the Yiddish Women Playwrights Series is a presentation of Kadye Molodowsky’s 1936 work, Ale Fenster Tsu Der Zun (All the Windows Face the Sun). This is a surrealistic play about a child who builds a magic tower from which present-day people witness historic tragedies (and the ongoing Spanish Civil War). Written before World War II, it hopes for a future without these tragedies and in which all windows face the sun. Details about this presentation will be announced soon.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Limited Engagement begins January 19th, 2022 – TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE

NYTF and New York City Opera (Michael Capasso, General Director) present the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's (Intimate Apparel, Ellen West) new opera, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Featuring a libretto by Michael Korie (Flying Over Sunset, War Paint, Grey Gardens), The Garden of Finzi-Continis is based on Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel (considered a modern classic which is also the basis for Vittorio De Sica’s 1970 film adaptation starring Dominique Sanda and Helmet Berger – the 1972 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film). The production will be conducted by James Lowe, directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford.

Based on Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel, The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis is set on the eve of World War II and tells the story of an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family, the Finzi-Continis, who believe they will be immune to the changes happening around them. As they make a gracious haven for themselves in their garden, walling out the unpleasantness of the world outside, Italy forms its alliance with Germany and begins to enforce anti-Semitic racial laws. But the Finzi-Continis discover too late that no one is immune, no one is untouchable.

Tickets for this limited engagement, which will play eight performances through Sunday, January 30th. are available at https://nytf.org/finzi-continis/.

Harmony: A New Musical – Previews begin on March 23rd, 2022 – TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE

NYTF, in association with Tony Award-winning producer Ken Davenport, presents the New York debut of the acclaimed Harmony: A New Musical by the legendary Barry Manilow and his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman in March 2022. The musical tells the true story of the Comedian Harmonists, an ensemble of six talented young men in 1920s Germany who took the world by storm with their signature blend of sophisticated close harmonies and uproarious stage antics, until their inclusion of Jewish singers put them on a collision course with history. Harmony: A New Musical is based in part on The Comedian Harmonist Archive as curated by the late Dr. Peter Czada.

NYTF will present Harmony: A New Musical in English, with previews beginning on March 23rd, 2022, opening on April 13th and running through May 8th. Tickets begin at $79.

Directing and choreographing Harmony: A New Musical will be Tony Award winner and Emmy-nominated Director Warren Carlyle. Carlyle won a 2014 Tony Award for his choreography for After Midnight, for which he was also Tony Award nominated as Best Director. Carlyle was again nominated for a 2019 Tony Award for his choreography for the critically acclaimed revival of Kiss Me Kate and for a Drama Desk award for Best Director and Choreography for the Broadway revival of Finian’s Rainbow. Other Broadway credits include Hello, Dolly!, She Loves Me, On the Twentieth Century, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, A Christmas Story, and Chaplin. He directed and choreographed Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway, as well as Hugh Jackman's 2019 World Tour. Upcoming: choreographing the Broadway revival of The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.

This production is being produced in association with Ken Davenport, who most recently won a Tony for Best Revival of a Musical for Once on This Island and a Tony for Best Musical for Kinky Boots, and received Tony nominations for Spring Awakening (Revival of a Musical), The Visit (Musical), and You’re Welcome America (Special Theatrical Event). Garry C. Kief is serving as producer. Additional producers are Amuse Inc., Susan DuBow, and Neil Gooding Productions. This presentation is being produced in association with Wilfried Rimensberger of Stiletto Entertainment. Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement about the cast and other members of the creative team.

15 Minute Yiddish (More or Less)

This fall, NYTF presents the third season of the fan-favorite, 15 Minute Yiddish (More or Less). NYTF launched the online series as part of the popular Folksbiene LIVE! to connect with audiences at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Produced by NYTF Associate Artistic Director Motl Didner, each episode offers 15 Minute Yiddish (More or Less) lessons brought to life by a vibrant cast of fictional characters.

“15 Minute Yiddish (More or Less) has been a ton of fun to make,” Didner said, “Whenever I have taught live Yiddish classes, getting to know the students, hearing their stories, and refereeing their arguments has always been the most interesting part. So, I raided my family's closets and the kids' costume bin and Helen, Scott, Wayne, Murray, Sophia, and Professor Thompson were created."

The series is held on Tuesdays at 1:00 PM ET through January 11th, 2022 and has been a hit with viewers of all ages, including Jews looking to connect with their cultural heritage and non-Jewish viewers with little connection to Yiddish. Past episodes are available at NYTF.org/live.