The date of the second edition of the international multi-genre festival of Jewish culture this year falls on the European Days of Jewish Culture. The festival organises a total of 80 events at 15 venues in Brno. Its basic mission and purpose remains the promotion of mutual tolerance and respect - the motto of the festival being "dignity in diversity". This year's festival also has an important musical line-up, with Karma She, Avraham Taylor and Shalosh all performing.
"The International Festival of Jewish Culture ŠTETL FEST, organized last year by the Jewish Community of Brno and the ŠTETL Association, not only fulfilled the expectations we had set for it, but achieved results that far exceeded them. The topic of Judaism has captured the attention of the professional community as well as the general public, both locally and internationally. The "Library of Stolen Hopes" project, which aims to return religious books stolen by the Nazis during the Holocaust to their original owners and their descendants, has achieved international importance. The new production "The Story of a Book" was presented at the Globale Festival in Bremen, Rehearsal for Truth in New York and during the Jüdische Woche in Leipzig. The response to the festival and its individual themes was one of the decisive factors for the organisation of the second edition. For this year's edition, trains were chosen as the main theme. To commemorate and remember the more than 10 000 Jewish inhabitants of Brno and the surrounding villages who were deported to concentration camps and systematically murdered there, we have decided to establish a suitable memorial on platform 5 at Brno's main railway station. This memorial will be built on the spot where the deportation of our unfortunate fellow human beings began, and will thus honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust," said Jáchym Kanarek, chairman of the Jewish Community of Brno, when commenting on the second year of the festival. ŠTETL FEST will take place in Brno from 31 August to 3 September 2023.
In addition to a full and varied programme, including guided tours, talks, architectural walks, a Jewish market and theatre performances, there will be plenty of concerts too. Around twenty concerts of Czech and foreign performers and groups have been prepared. The Israeli jazz trio Shalosh will visit Brno - a group of versatile musicians who have forged a very specific path and create a unique and fascinating synthesis of such diverse genres as rock, classical, electronic, African and Middle Eastern music. The band Di Grine Kuzine from Berlin will perform a spirited fusion of klezmer, Balkan brass, Latin groove and ska. You can look forward to brisk beats, quick brass and the stunning vocals of Alexandra Dimitroff. Chassidic songs will be played and sung by Israeli cantor Avraham Taylor. His repertoire consists mainly of Chassidic songs, with a special emphasis on melodies from the Chassidut of Modzhits and the compositions of Rabbi Benzion Shenker.
This year, the field of alternative electronic music will be represented by the Jerusalem-born, Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Karma She. With her crew, She manages to captivate audiences with an extremely visual show that combines choreography and ecstatic ritual elements that draw onlookers into a universe inspired by Jewish heritage and other subcultures. Detroit-born multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kahn and New York-based violinist Jake Shulman-Ment will present their new album The Building & Other Songs to Brno audiences. Together they have successfully embarked on the risky path of radical reworkings of modern Yiddish compositions or original Yiddish translations of songs by world musicians.
The festival will then close with a spectacular concert at the Besední dům, featuring Ludwig van Beethoven's string quartet and Steve Reich's Different Trains performed by the Škamp Quartet. Beethoven's composition and original autograph belonged to the Jewish Petschek family from Ústí nad Labem. They tried to escape from Hitler through Brno and hid part of their property there. After more than 80 years, the Moravian Museum returned the rediscovered autograph to the family last year. The audience will learn more about the fate of the Petschek family and the recovered autograph at a talk before the concert.
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