The Yellow Ticket in Seattle, Monday 5/12

Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals performs her original score live to a screening of 1918 silent film
The work, which was awarded the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s 2012 New Jewish Music Network commission, is currently touring the U.S. and Canada. Next stop: as part of a Music of Remembrance concert at Benaroya Hall, Seattle. This performance, with Alicia on violin and pianist Marilyn Lerner, will also be the premiere of a new version of the score for clarinet, violin and piano, commissioned by Music of Remembrance and featuring Seattle Symphony clarinetist Laura DeLuca.

Remarkably progressive for its time, The Yellow Ticket (1918) is the first film to explore the discrimination of Jews in Tsarist Russia and stars famed Polish actress Pola Negri, Hollywood?s first European silent film star. Filmed on location in German-occupied Warsaw, it tells the story of Lea, a young woman who hides her Jewish heritage to study medicine. Pushed towards prostitution to pay the rent, Lea is saved by a beloved professor with a secret of his own.

Svigals performs her score live with Canadian new music virtuoso, pianist Marilyn Lerner.

Thanks to a grant from the Still Point Fund, Svigals’ Yellow Ticket tour also premieres a newly digitized version of the film, created so that audiences can view it for the first time in almost a century at the proper speed, in high definition and with intertitles accurately translated from the original German.

7:30 p.m. | Monday, May 12, 2014
6:45 p.m. | Meet the Composers: Alicia Svigals and Lori Laitman

Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle
Tickets: http://www.musicofremembrance.org/~musicofr/concert/spring-concert-yellow-ticket

Two World Premieres!

Clarinetist Laura DeLuca joins the Klezmatics? Alicia Svigals in a performance of Svigal’s new score to enliven this special screening of the classic 1918 silent film starring Pola Negri. And the World Premiere of Lori Laitman’s song cycle, In Sleep The World Is Yours, setting the haunting verses of Selma Meerbaum Eisinger, a gifted young poet who perished at age 18 in a Nazi labor camp.
See: Alicia’s website – aliciasvigals.com

The Yellow Ticket production was commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture?s New Jewish Culture Network, a league of North American performing arts presenters committed to the creation and touring of innovative projects. The Yellow Ticket received its debut at the Washington Jewish Music Festival presented by the Washington DC Jewish Community Center through a commission made possible by the Arthur Tracy “The Street Singer” Endowment Fund. The New Jewish Culture Network has received major support from the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by Sylvia M. Neil, the Milken Family Foundation and other donors. Photos courtesy of Tina Chaden (Alicia) and Chris Randle (Alicia and movie).