C.A.I.F. – Cultural Association of Italians at Fermilab
I.I.C. – Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Chicago
Present
Ensemble Lucidarium
“La ISTORIA de PURIM”
Jewish Music and Poetry in
Renaissance Italy

The Ensemble Lucidarium, a famous international group of
scholar musicians specialized in the works of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, will perform: “La Istoria de Purim,” Jewish music and
poetry from the Italian Renaissance, which was awarded first prize in 2004
by the European Association for Jewish Culture. In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, northern Italy was a meeting place for three
separate Jewish communities: Ashkenazi, Jews coming from
northeastern Europe, Sephardic Jews from the Iberian peninsula, and
Italikim who had been in Italy since the days of the Roman Empire. The
music from this period is characterized by a fertile exchange of
ideas and culture between Jews and gentiles. The texts transcribed into
the Hebrew alphabet in four-verse stanzas are written in the colorful
Jewish vernacular spoken in the Po valley during the sixteenth century.
The rhymes were typical of the songs performed to celebrate the
festival of Purim by recounting the story of Queen Esther. Ensemble
Lucidarium has reconstructed the music through painstaking research into
sixteenth-century music and oral traditions still alive in certain areas of
the Tuscan and Emilian Apennines.

This concert has been organized with the support of Congregation Beth Shalom
of Naperville and E.A.J.C. (European Association for Jewish Culture).

Saturday, March 17, 8 pm
FERMILAB (Batavia, IL)
Ramsey Auditorium
Tickets: $ 10.00 ($ 5.00 under 18)
(630) 840 2787 (ARTS)