FROM THE JAWS OF THE LION
On 25 March, 2007, in the advent of Yom HaShoah veHaG’vurah, the Felicia Blumenthal Music Center in Tel-Aviv will present a concert of art songs by Arie Ben Erez Abrahamson (1904-1992). Composed before his deportation, during his imprisonment in the concentration camps of Vichy France, and after his escape from his captors, the music is set to texts of Yiddish and Hebrew poets such as Sutzkewer, Reisen, Rosenfeld, Kipnis, Bialik, and Tschernchowsky. The songs give expression to manifold aspects of Jewish life in the Diaspora, the anxieties of survival, and joy in the renaissance of national Jewish life in the old new homeland. Born in the former Czechoslovakia, Arie Ben Erez Abrahamson’s creative process was nourished by the musical traditions of the former Austro-Hungary and the ancient modes of Jewish liturgy. Much of his music miraculously survived the ravages of WWII.

THE ARTISTS
Singers: Eva Ben-Zvi, Soprano, Joshua Breitzer, Tenor, Eliyahu Schleifer, Baritone, Mikhal Shiff Matter, Mezzo- Soprano. Pianists: Ahouvah Babayoff Kremer, Aya Schleifer.
Time: Sunday, 25 March 2007, 8:30 PM
Venue: The Felicia Blumenthal Music Center and Library
Bialik Street, 26
Tel-Aviv 61048
www.fbmc.co.il

The title of the program is derived from the phrase “Free us from the jaws of the lion,” from the well know text by the 16th century poet Israel Najara . Arie Ben Erez Abrahamson set it to music while a prisoner in the Saint Cyprien Concentration Camp in Vichy France.