Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: An Afternoon Concert with Theresa Tova
Thursday, March 23, 2 pm
Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center
1414 Walnut St., Berkeley
AND
Yiddish Matters: A Conversation with Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman,
Itzik Gottesman and Harvey Varga
Thursday, March 23, 7:30 pm, Jewish Community Center San Francisco
3200 California St., SF
Part of the 21st Annual Jewish Music Festival: March 4-26, 2006
For tickets and information: www.jewishmusicfestival.org or 415-276-1511
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: an intimate afternoon of original Yiddish songs with Master Artist, Yiddish songwriter, singer, poet and recipient of the 2005 NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award. She will appear with international Yiddish singer Theresa Tova (performing also March 25th, Three Yiddish Divas).
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman was born in Vienna, Austria, but was raised in pre-war Chernovitz, Romania, one of the centers of Yiddish intellectual culture. She survived the Holocaust in the ghetto in Chernovitz and came to the United States in 1951. Active as a teacher and songwriter, she also began to write poetry and gained a reputation as one of America's premier Yiddish poets. Many of her songs cover a wide range of subjects from subway musicians, to personal reminiscences, to descriptions of street life in her hometown, the Bronx. The renaissance of klezmer music in the United States allowed her large repertoire of traditional and original material to be performed by many artists including Theodore Bikel, Adrienne Cooper, and Michael Alpert.
Schaechter-Gottesman has been acclaimed as one of the great living unaccompanied ballad singers as well. She takes great pride in her work with children, writing songs especially for them and performing frequently for young audiences. In 1998, she was inducted into the People's Hall of Fame by the organization City Lore based in New York City.
Beyle Gottesman has devoted a lot of her life to a creative response to reviving Yiddish culture. For this reason, the 21st Jewish Music Festival will host a conversation with Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman and her son, Itzik Gottesman, associate editor of the Yiddish Forward, with Harvey Varga, Bay Area Yiddishist. Presented in association with the Holocaust Center of Northern California, Lehrhaus Judaica, and JCCSF.
High Resolution photos for these artists are available immediately upon request or will be available on the festival website www.jewishmusicfestival.org/press. For further information, please call Ellie Shapiro, (510) 848-0237 x126 or
The Jewish Music Festival is a program of the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center