performance
Still Talking: Celebrating Lore Segal in Performance - In-person Program
On April 15th, 2026, WORDTheatre will bring Lore Segal’s final short story collection, Still Talking, to life through performances by James Cromwell (Succession), Toni Kalem (The Sopranos), Mary Beth Peil (Dawson’s Creek), Penny Fuller (All the President’s Men), Cynthia Adler (Happyish) & Laila Robins (The Walking Dead). Cellist Susan Salm will provide musical accompaniment. Curated, produced & directed by WORDTheatre’s Founder & Artistic Director, Cedering Fox.
This program is the closing celebration of the Leo Baeck Institute's exhibition "And That's True Too: The Life and Work of Lore Segal."
About the Performers
James Oliver Cromwell is an esteemed actor and activist. Known for his extensive work as a character actor, he has received a Primetime Emmy Award as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Babe (1995). Other notable roles include in L.A. Confidential (1997), Deep Impact (1998), Boardwalk Empire (2012–2013), and Succession (2018–2023), for which he earned three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor.
Mary Beth Peil is known for her long career on stage and screen, including her Tony-nominated performance in The King and I (1985) on Broadway. On television, she is recognized for roles in Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003) and The Good Wife (2009–2016).
Toni Kalem is an actress known for her various television credits, including guest appearances on Starsky and Hutch, MacGyver, Another World, and Police Woman. During the sixth season of The Sopranos, Kalem was elevated from guest star to series regular for her character Angie Bonpensiero.
Penny Fuller is an actress known for her extensive work on Broadway and television, winning an Emmy for playing Mrs. Kendal in The Elephant Man and earning Tony nominations for Applause (as Eve Harrington) and The Dinner Party. A versatile performer since the 1960s, she’s recognized for roles in All the President’s Men, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sunday in the Park with George.
Cynthia Adler is one of the top commercial voice-overs and narrators in America, having worked extensively with HBO, Discovery Channel, and PBS. She was the voice of many cartoon characters for Hanna Barbara, and for the animated feature “Fantastic Planet.” She has dubbed leading roles in numerous foreign films, such as Swept Away, and Seven Beauties, for Lina Wertmueller, 1900 for Bernardo Bertolucci, and Scenes From A Marriage for Ingmar Bergman. Her on-screen film credits include Che Cosa? for Italian Television, Hangin’ Out With Cici, for ABC, George Romero’s Knightriders, and Banana’s Is My Business for PBS.
Laila Robins is known for her stage and screen work, including films such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), An Innocent Man (1989), and True Crime (1999). On television, she has appeared in Homeland (2014), The Blacklist (2013), and The Boys (2019).
About the Author
Lore Segal was born on March 9, 1928, in Vienna, the only child of solidly middle-class parents; her father, Ignatz Groszmann, was chief accountant at a bank, while her mother, Franzi (Stern), was a homemaker. Her life changed dramatically, however, shortly after Hitler’s annexation of Austria, when she was one of a group of 500 Jewish schoolchildren quickly sent to England. For the next thirteen years she lived in several countries and with many different families—earning a B.A. from Bedford College, London, along the way—before finally achieving her independence and settling in New York. In 1961, Lore Groszmann married David Segal, an editor; they had two children, Beatrice and Jacob, before David’s sudden death in 1970. In addition to her writing career, Segal held teaching appointments at Columbia University, Princeton University, Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University, from which she retired in 1995. She was an active writer into her nineties.
Ticket Info: $45; LBI/CJH/Partner Members, Students, Seniors: $30
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concert
Musical Memoir - In-person Program
Join us for a special concert of the New York premiere of Muriel’s Songs (2023) by Eric Chasalow and a performance of Alex Weiser's Coney Island Days (2022), two song cycles that commemorate the composers’ grandmothers and detail how they navigated 20th century American Jewish life in New York City. The program will open with Joan Tower’s Petroushskates (1980).
Muriel’s Songs traverses the tumult of 20th century America from the very personal, intimate, and primarily domestic perspective of Chasalow’s grandmother, Muriel, with each song inhabiting its own musical world with stylistic points of departure from Baroque to Tin Pan Alley, The Beatles, Latin Jazz and Disco to Milton Babbitt. The songs describe Muriel’s experiences coming of age and through adulthood, including piano lessons, marriage, and family vacations.
Coney Island Days sets to music words from an oral history interview with Weiser’s grandmother, Irene, about childhood in the bilingual immigrant world of Coney Island in the 1930s and ‘40s. Irene would buy penny candies, spend days at the movies, explore Coney Island’s rides and beaches, eat at Nathan’s, and spend summers living behind her family’s knish store.
Both song cycles serve as love letters to the composers’ grandmothers and invoke the nostalgia of 20th century New York Jewish life.
This concert will be performed by the Talea Ensemble, followed by a discussion with Chasalow and Weiser.
About the Participants
Drawing from every corner of the soundworld, Eric Chasalow creates genre-defying music. As a mentor and long time arts advocate, he works tirelessly to nurture developing composers and encourage a community with the greatest respect for the arts and artists. Part of the last generation of composers to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Eric has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Fromm Foundation at Harvard, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Eric’s music has been commissioned and performed by numerous soloists and ensembles in the US and abroad including Talea Ensemble (New York), Ensemble Phoenix (Basel), and California EAR Unit (Los Angeles). Eric is the Irving Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University where he directs the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS). He is a proud alumnus of Bates College, studied at New England Conservatory of Music, and earned the DMA from Columbia University, studying primarily with Mario Davidovsky.
Alex Weiser is the Director of Public Programs at the YIVO Institute where he curates programs that explore history with an eye to contemporary Jewish culture. As a composer, Weiser’s debut album and all the days were purple, was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist. The album features songs in Yiddish and English sung by Eliza Bagg. A second album, in a dark blue night, features two song cycles which explore Jewish New York history sung by Annie Rosen. Other projects include operas Tevye’s Daughters with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann (American Lyric Theater), andState of the Jews and The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language with librettist Ben Kaplan (American Opera Projects).
Recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Talea Ensemble has brought to life at least 80 commissions of major new works since it was founded in 2008, including bold and inventive productions combining music and other genres. In addition to a robust NYC performance season, festival engagements have included the Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Time of Music Finland, TIME:SPANS, NY Philharmonic Artist Spotlight Series, and many more. Talea’s recordings have been distributed worldwide on the KAIROS, Wergo, Gravina Musica, Tzadik, Innova, and New World Records labels. Talea supports early-career composers through US school residencies, a commissioning program, and a composer recording workshop.
Ticket Info: $18; ASJM & YIVO members: $12; Seniors & students: $9
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the blavatnik chamber music series at cjh
From Café to Concert Hall - In-Person Concert & Live on YouTube
Join Phoenix Chamber Ensemble pianists Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky with guest artists Anna Elashvili (violin), Daniel Panner (viola), and Serafim Smegelskiy (cello), for an evening of Paul Schoenfeld, Clara Schumann, and Robert Schumann.
Program:
Paul Schoenfeld - Café Music for Piano Trio
Clara Schumann, Three Romances for Viola and Piano, Op.22
Robert Schumann, Piano Quartet in E- Flat Major, Op.47
Founded in 2005 by pianists Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky, the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble has become a vital part of the New York classical community, presenting more than 70 public concerts at the Center for Jewish History. The ensemble has garnered a devoted following with its innovative programming and sensitive interpretations, earned an international reputation presenting concerts in Russia, Poland, Italy, and other European venues, and collaborated with numerous acclaimed guest artists, including clarinetist David Krakauer, the Grammy-nominated Enso Quartet, the Tesla Quartet, members of the Jasper String Quartet, the New York Little Opera Company, the Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet.
Made possible by the Stravinsky Institute Foundation through the generous support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
Ticket Info:
In-person: $15 general; $10 senior/student; $8 CJH member; click here to register
YouTube: Pay what you wish; click here to register
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the blavatnik chamber music series at cjh
concert
Khantshe in Amerike — An Operetta by Joseph Rumshinsky - In-person Program and Live on Zoom
Join YIVO for a performance of the music of Khantshe in Amerike, a 1912 operetta with music by Joseph Rumshinsky, play by Nokhem Rakov, and lyrics by Isidore Lillian.
Premiered in New York City, Khantshe in Amerike was subsequently performed around the world. The show was a turning point in Rumshinsky’s output, noted for having put “American rhythm” on the Yiddish stage for the first time according to Yiddish theater historian Zalmen Zylbercweig (1894–1972). Khantshe was also a star vehicle which marked a pivotal moment in the career of singer, actor, and impresario Bessie Tomashefsky.
Khantshe in Amerike is a musical comedy whose action revolves around an independent minded young woman named Khantshe who dresses as a man and becomes the chauffeur for the wealthy Rubin Goldhendler. The show touches on serious topics including love, gender, women's suffrage and the changing social status of women in turn-of-the-century America.
Reconstructed from a variety of archival materials collected at YIVO—including from the recently donated Tomashefsky Archive from Michael Tilson Thomas—the operetta will be performed by students of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program.
The Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series is made possible by a generous gift from the Estate of Sidney Krum.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info:
In Person: $15; YIVO members & students: $10
Livestream: Free; registration is required
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Jewish Songs and Dances for Piano: Juliusz Wolfsohn’s 'Paraphrasen' - Book III – Live on YouTUbe
Join YIVO for a YouTube premiere performance by Ryan MacEvoy McCullough of Book III of Juliusz Wolfsohn’s Paraphrasen: a collection of 12 virtuosic piano fantasies based on Yiddish folksongs. Wolfsohn was a Warsaw- born pianist, critic, and composer who was active in the Association for the Promotion of Jewish Music in Vienna. Born in Warsaw in 1880, Wolfsohn later settled in the United States, where he died in 1944. Paraphrasen is one of multiple works Wolfsohn composed on Eastern European Jewish themes.
Register for the YouTube premiere performance of Paraphrasen, Book II taking place on March 9, 2026.
Watch the performance of Paraphrasen, Book I.
The Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series is made possible by a generous gift from the Estate of Sidney Krum.
About the Performer
Pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough has developed a rich musical life as soloist, vocal and instrumental collaborator, composer, recording artist, and pedagogue. His growing discography features many world premiere recordings, including solo piano works of Milosz Magin (Acte Prealable), Andrew McPherson (Secrets of Antikythera, Innova), John Liberatore (Line Drawings, Albany), Nicholas Vines (Hipster Zombies from Mars, Navona), art song and solo piano music of John Harbison and James Primosch (Descent/Return, Albany), and art song by Sheila Silver (Beauty Intolerable, Albany). He has also appeared on PBS’s Great Performances (Now Hear This, “The Schubert Generation”) and NPR’s From the Top. He has appeared as a concerto soloist with major orchestras including with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Toronto Symphony Orchestra and has collaborated with such conductors as Gisele Ben-Dur, George Benjamin, Fabien Gabel, Leonid Grin, Anthony Parnther, Larry Rachleff, Mischa Santora, and Joshua Weilerstein. He lives in Kingston, NY, with his wife, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon.
Ticket Info: Free; register for an email reminder.
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