Special charity concert by Simcha – Lincoln’s Klezmer Band

Date: Friday 27th January 2023
Venue: Jackson Lecture Theatre, University of Lincoln LN6 7TS
Time: 19.30
Price: Free with retiring collection

To mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Simcha is presenting its concert documentary called Kindertransport. This tells the story of the 1938 rescue of thousands of children from Nazi-occupied Europe. The UK took in nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Staged in conjunction with the University’s Multi-Faith Chaplaincy, the concert is free and all are welcome. There will be a collection at the end to raise money for Safe Passage, a charity that helps refugee children throughout the world – an issue that is relevant to today’s war-torn climate.

Inspired by Dr. Robin Young, whose father came to the UK from Czechoslovakia as part of the Kindertransport, there are readings from contemporary sources describing the growing feeling of impending catastrophe across Europe. Simcha will be playing tunes that would have been heard by those Jewish communities, along with music specially composed by Simcha’s clarinetist Jonathan Rider, which intersperses the readings, including personal letters and poetry.

The second half of the evening is Simcha in concert. Simcha is a Yiddish word meaning Celebration and this 8-piece band plays lively dance tunes and heart-rending melodies from everyday life from Jewish Europe.

This genre is known as Klezmer – from the Yiddish word Klezmerim, meaning itinerant musicians. Handed down by oral tradition and played across eastern Europe from Russia to the Baltic and Balkan countries, this secular music also made its way to the USA where it became absorbed into the New York jazz scene.

This concert will also be staged at Louth’s Riverhead Theatre on 17th March

For further information please call Enzo on 07944 907051

Story submitted by Subash Chellaiah
schellaiah@lincoln.ac.uk