the blavatnik chamber music series at cjh
Keyboard Kaleidoscope - In-Person Concert & Live on YouTube
Join Phoenix Chamber Ensemble pianists Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky with guest artist Ellen Braslavsky (piano) for a memorable evening of Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Schnittke, and Bizet.
Program:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata in D Major, K. 448, for Two Pianos, Four Hands
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Suite No. 1, Op.5 for Two Pianos, Four Hands
Alfred Schnittke, Gogol Suite, arranged for two pianos by Valery Borovikov
Georges Bizet, Carmen Suite for Piano Six Hands, arranged by J. Kowalewski
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: $18 general, $10 seniors, $8 members click here to register
YouTube: Pay what you wish; click here to register
Presented by:
the blavatnik chamber music series at cjh
cabaret performance
Dance on the Volcano: A Revue - In-person Program
A cabaret of the vibrant and contradictory Berlin of the 1920s.
We cordially invite you to a special series of events in cooperation with Elysium, which will transport you to the vibrant and contradictory Berlin of the 1920s. The production is so captivating that it will be performed three times on both sides of the Atlantic.Amid hyperinflation, social misery, and political street battles, a fascinating cultural flowering emerged: Dada, Bauhaus, jazz, cabaret – and an escape into the dazzling world of film and operetta. At its heart was Erwin Piscator, founder of political theater, who, shaped by his experiences at the front in the First World War, understood the stage as a site of social change.This eventful era comes alive in an impressive revue – with texts by Erich Mühsam, Erwin Piscator, Alfred Polgar, Kurt Tucholsky and others, accompanied by music by Paul Abraham, Hanns Eisler, Mischa Spolianski and others.
Ticket Info: General Admission: $33.85, Members/Students/Seniors: §17.85
Presented by:
cabaret performance
lecture and concert
Nusakh Vilne Memorial: Songs of Eliakum Zunser – In-person Program and Live on Zoom
Join us in commemorating the Jewish community of Vilna through poetry, music, and presentation.
This year, Alyssa Quint will discuss the work of folk bard and songwriter Eliakum Zunser (Elyokem Tsunzer). A performance of Zunser’s music by tenor Maximillian Jansen and pianist Dan Schlosberg will follow Quint’s presentation.
About the Participants
Alyssa Quint is the Leo Charney Visiting Fellow at Yeshiva University’s Israel Studies Center and a co-editor of the Yiddish Voices translations series (YIVO/Bloomsbury). She is the author of The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater (2019), which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Jordan Schnitzer Award. She is also the editor of three volumes on the Yiddish theater: Women on the Yiddish Stage (2023), Three Yiddish Plays by Women: Female Jewish Perspectives, 1880-1920 (2023), and Mississippi: a Yiddish Play About the Scottsboro Affair (2026). She is a contributing editor of the online Digital Yiddish Theater Project and an editor and writer for Tablet Magazine.
Tenor Maximillian Jansen is a versatile performer acclaimed for his work in opera, concert, and musical theater, praised for his “warm, but penetrating voice” (The Times Union). Recent highlights include his Lincoln Center debut with the New York Choral Society in Honegger’s King David, appearances with the Metropolitan Opera, Berkshire Opera Festival, and Opera Saratoga, and performances at the Bard Music Festival. In 2022, he presented a live premiere of a new work by David Ludwig Serkin for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. This premiere was given as part of YIVO’s Continuing Evolution: Yiddish Folksong Today, a music festival celebrating Yiddish folksong.
Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, arranger, and music director Dan Schlosberg creates acclaimed work across opera, theater, and concert music. Recent projects include arrangements and music direction of the original cast recording of Heartbeat Opera’s Manon! (2026); the new opera Complications In Sue (2026) with Michael R. Jackson’s libretto at Opera Philadelphia; the new musical The Counterfeit Opera (2025), which premiered at Little Island; and new orchestration for Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale (2025) at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. In 2021, Schlosberg was the audition, rehearsal, and soundtrack pianist for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.
Ticket Info: Free; registration required
Presented by:
lecture and concert
concert
Reclaiming More Music of Polish Composers: Refugees from World War II - In-person Program
This concert, entitled “Reclaiming More Music of Polish Composers: Refugees from World War II,” is another in a continuing series of collaborations between organizations which share the goal of musical reclamation. Composers whose voices and careers were brutally silenced by the Nazis during World War II were also blindsided by the post-war music world.
Even today, more than 80 years later, there is still a need to give voice to the music of these creators. Included on the program is essential, mostly unheard music, by Szymon Laks, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, and Roman Ryterband, some of Poland’s most important pre-war composers. This concert will feature performances by Hanna Hipp (mezzo soprano), Jaroslaw Nadrzycki (violin), Josif Feigelson (cello), and Grzegorz Mania (piano).
Reception to follow concert.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
Presented by:
concert
performance
A Staged Reading of 'The Dybbuk' – In-person Program
Join YIVO and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene for a staged reading of Sh. An-ski’s legendary folk drama of spiritual possession and predestined love, The Dybbuk. Growing out of An-ski’s ethnographic expeditions to the Pale of Settlement between 1912 and 1914, The Dybbuk includes a wealth of detail pulled from Jewish folklore. During these expeditions, An-ski and a team took photographs, made recordings, and gathered hundreds of folktales, folksongs, and sacred objects to document traditional Eastern European Jewish life. The resulting play, originally written in Russian between 1913 and 1916, was translated into Yiddish by An-ski himself and is considered a canonic work of Yiddish theater, which has inspired countless film, opera, and ballet adaptations. This staged reading is directed by Mikhl Yashinsky.
This reading will be in Yiddish with English supertitles.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required
Presented by:
performance
concert
Music in Our Time 2026 - Fleeing for Survival - In-person Program
Leaving their homelands and taking flight from the repressive, advancing Hitler regime, Jewish composers, and many whose music was labeled degenerate, had to leave Germany, Austria, France, among other countries, and found themselves fleeing for survival. This concert showcases some of the music written by Darius Milhaud, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Paul Ben-Haim, Walter Bricht, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Julius Bürger, Erich Zeisl, Karol Rathaus, and Kurt Weill.
Amid the shock of dislocation and struggling with new languages, they attempted to restart their formerly promising European careers on foreign soil. The United States and Palestine were the inadvertent beneficiaries of much of this sadly interrupted powerful and promising European legacy.
This concert will be performed by the young artists of the Mannes School of Music and presented by the American Society for Jewish Music, The Mannes Sounds Festival, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the Leo Baeck Institute.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required.
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concert
concert
Hanukkah Concert 2026 - In-person Program
Celebrating the joys of the season, the American Society for Jewish Music's Annual Hanukkah concert has been a popular mainstay for many years. Co-sponsored by YIVO, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the Center for Jewish History, the performance celebrates this joyous holiday with songs and stories that charm and delight audiences.
This year’s concert will welcome back Paul Shapiro’s Ribs & Brisket Band, featuring Cilla Owens. Eleanor Reissa, the Tony Award-nominated director, Broadway, TV and film actress, playwright, choreographer, and critically acclaimed singer, will also read a Hanukkah story to start the program.
Ticket Info: $18; ASJM, YIVO, & CJH members: $12; Seniors & students: $9
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concert
concert
Music of the Third Seder: A Yiddish Passover Concert – In-person Program and Live on Zoom
Join us for an evening exploring the musical legacy of the Third Seder, the secular Passover celebration that became a vibrant feature of Yiddish cultural life in twentieth-century America. Presented in collaboration with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, this concert brings together rarely heard works and newly revived repertoire from this rich tradition.
The program features the world-premiere of two-piano arrangements of music by Lazar Weiner and Gershon Kingsley. A highlight of the evening Der Farshterter Peysekh (The Ruined Passover), a short ballet with narration based on Sholem Aleichem’s beloved Passover story. Featuring Zalmen Mlotek and Joyce Rosenzweig, along with special guest artists, the performance will also include additional musical treasures from the Third Seder tradition.
Ticket Info: $10; YIVO members: $5
Presented by:
concert
