Dear Friends of Yiddish Summer Weimar!
April 2nd Update:
Due to technical difficulties, workshop registration has to start a little later than we’d planned, and we sincerely apologize for the unexpected delay!
We’ve updated the website with workshop descriptions, conditions for participation, and volunteer registration, and we’ll let you know via our newsletter, social media, and website as soon as workshop registration opens.
Meanwhile, we hope that reading the latest update whets your appetite for the truly sumptuous feast of Yiddish culture we’ve prepared to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Yiddish Summer Weimar this year! We hope you can join us!
YSW25 will begin on July 12th and end on August 17th.
July 12th, 2025: Opening Concert with, amongst others, YAM-Ensemble with Ilya Shneyveys and young musicians from Turkey, Greece and Germany.
August 9th, 2025: Dance ball
August 12th - 17th, 2025: Festival week, with a special gala to celebrate the 25th year of YSW on Sunday, August 17th.
About the Workshops
What’s new in 2025?
Hi everybody! As you know, we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2025. That means 25 years of exploring topics like The Other Europeans, Ashkenaz I & II, New Yiddish Music, The Other Israel, Yiddish-Ottoman Roots & Routes, and many more. This summer, we’re going to take stock of where we are and how we got here, update and gather the knowledge and practices we’ve gained over the years, and give everyone the chance to catch up on topics they may have missed.
6-hour workshops & 3-hour workshops
To help make that possible, we’re trying something this year that we’ve never done before. In the past, all of our workshops have been 6-hours per day, with a morning session, a lunch break, and an afternoon session. This year, in addition to 6-hour workshops, we’re also offering a variety of self-contained, 3-hour workshops. These cover a variety of topics and are presented twice each day. For example, there will be a 3-hour The Other Europeans workshop in the morning and a second 3-hour The Other Europeans workshop with separate repertoire in the afternoon.
Why?
Why are we doing this? Because we want to give you the chance to explore as many topics as possible during your stay with us. The 3-hour “modular” workshop system means you can take a 3-hour workshop with one topic in the morning and another 3-hour workshop with a different topic in the afternoon. This year, we’re also offering Western Yiddish in the first workshop week and Yiddish for Musicians in the second workshop week, a 3-hour introductory workshop in Yiddish with a special focus on klezmer-loshn, a dialect of Yiddish formerly spoken by klezmer musicians. For those of you who are interested, your daily schedule can be one 3-hour music workshop and the 3-hour Yiddish workshop.
Where did the intermediate & advanced workshops go???
Because we’re covering many different topics this year instead of just one, it doesn’t make sense to offer a a single “intermediate instrumental” or “advanced instrumental” workshop. Instead, the 3-hour workshops will be for intermediate, advanced, or mixed levels. You choose among them to create the schedule that works best for you. The introductory-level workshops and a few special topic workshops will still have the familiar 6-hour format, for a variety of reasons.
Be sure to read each workshop description carefully when registering!
Choosing your workshop(s)
With so many choices, it’s crucial that you carefully check the schedule of each workshop you want to take! When you register, you’ll tell us which workshops you intend to take so we can keep an overview of the number of participants in each workshop. If a workshop doesn’t reach a certain minimum number of students, we may not be able to offer it at all, in which case we would ask you to consider a different workshop instead.
What if I don’t like my workshop(s) once they’ve started?
If the workshop teachers agree, you can switch to another workshop on the 2nd day, but not afterwards. That’s because we want to be able to go deeply into each topic, which isn’t possible if we have to start over several times to bring latecomers up to speed. Thanks for understanding!
Help!
If you feel confused after reading this, don’t worry! Help is at hand! Just call the office of YSW or write us an email (registration@othermusicacademy.eu) and someone will gladly help you navigate your options!!
It’s going to be an amazing, variety-filled 25th anniversary of Yiddish Summer Weimar, and we can hardly wait to get started! Hope to see you in Weimar this summer!
Workshop Dates, Topics and Faculty
July 13th - July 20th, 2025
Ashkenaz I: Early Yiddish Vocal & Instrumental Music
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | intermediate & advanced
with Dr Diana Matut, Avery Gosfield & Erik Warkenthin
Ashkenaz I: An Introduction to Western Yiddish
(You should know the Yiddish alphabet.)
3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate & advanced
with Dr Diana Matut
The Other Europeans: Moldavian-Yiddish Repertoire & Style
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | advanced
3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate
with Adam Stinga, Marin Bunea & Christian Dawid
The Ottoman Legacy: The Greco-Turkish-Yiddish Matrix
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | intermediate
3 - 6 p.m. | advanced
with Vassilis Ketentzoglou, Tayfun Guttstadt & Alan Bern
July 15th - July 20th, 2025
Introduction to Yiddish Song: Repertoire & Style
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | introductory
with Esther Wratschko & Anna Vishnevska
General Introduction to Klezmer & Yiddish Music
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | introductory
with Deborah Strauss, Jeff Warschauer, Zilyin Biret & Anna Lowenstein
July 16th - July 29th, 2025
Yiddish Language Program:
The “Other” Yiddish - Yiddish in the 21st Century
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | all levels
with Kriszta Eszter Szendrői, Mendy Cahan, Eli Benedict & Eidel Malowicki
July 24th - July 31st, 2025
Advanced Yiddish Song: Vocal Production, Style & Repertoire
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | advanced
3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate
with Sasha Lurje & Sarah Myerson
New Yiddish Music: The Lerner Moguilevsky Duo
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | intermediate
3 - 6 p.m. | advanced
with César Lerner & Marcelo Moguilevsky
Living Treasures from Old Manuscripts: Tunes from the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | advanced
3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate
with Susi Evans & Szilvia Csaranko
New Yiddish Song: Contemporary Repertoire & Yiddish Songwriting
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | intermediate
3 - 6 p.m. | advanced
with Daniel Kahn & Isabel Frey
Yiddish for Musicians: Introduction to Yiddish & Klezmer-loshn
(You should know the Yiddish alphabet.)
3 - 6 p.m. (afternoons only) | introductory
with Janina Wurbs
Aug 4th - Aug 9th, 2025
Dance Orchestra: Klezmer & Hasidic Repertoire
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate & advanced
with Ilya Shneyveys, Jordan Hirsch, Anna Lowenstein & Simon Roth
The Other Israel: The World of Yair Dalal
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate & advanced
with Yair Dalal
Advanced Introduction to Klezmer & Yiddish Music
for Music Conservatory Students & Professional Instrumentalists
(by audition only)
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | music conservatory students & professional instrumentalists
with Mark Kovnatskiy & Christian Dawid
Aug 5th - Aug 9th, 2025
Yiddish Choir: Traditional & Modern Repertoire for Mixed Voices
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | all levels
with Benjy Fox-Rosen & Esther Wratschko
Yiddish Dance for Everyone: Yiddish & Hasidic Dances
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | all levels
with Sarah Myerson & Eli Benedict
Advanced Yiddish Dance: Solo & Group Style
(by instructor’s permission only)
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | together with Yiddish Dance for Everyone
3 - 6 p.m. | advanced, meets separately
with Walter Zev Feldman
accompanied by Alan Bern & Zilyin Biret
Aug12th - Aug 16th, 2025
Oyf eyn fus (On One Foot): Special Topics in Jewish Thought
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | all levels
with Miriam Camerini
Yiddish String Ensemble: Solo & Ensemble Playing for Bowed String Instruments
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | intermediate & advanced
with Francesca Ter-Berg & Craig Judelman
Hasidic Music: The World of Eli Benedict
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. (mornings only) | intermediate & advanced (instrumentalists), all levels (singers)
with Eli Benedict & Jordan Hirsch
Aug 14th - Aug 17th, 2025
Youth Klezmer Band in cooperation with the Musikschule "Johann Nepomuk Hummel"
with Hannah Ochner, Ro van Wingerden & Pieter Sint Nicolaas
We’ll be publishing more information about workshops and events as soon as possible, and we’ll let you know by newsletter and social media whenever there’s an update.
So subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram for all of the latest news!
Warmest greetings from the YSW team of the Other Music Academy!
We've got a new photo gallery!
Dear Friends & Fans of Yiddish Summer Weimar! We've got a new photo gallery! Join us for a look back at some special moments of Yiddish Summer Weimar 2024 thanks to the extraordinary work of our festival photographer, Shendi Copitman:
YSW 2024 Photo Gallery
Foto: Shendl Copitman
YSW 2024 Wrap-up
How did Yiddish Summer Weimar go this year? From July 12th - August 17th, some 12,000 people attended more than 100 events in Weimar, Erfurt, Eisenach, Leipzig, Essen and other towns and cities including even Thessaloniki.
Our 14 workshops drew more than 330 participants from 17 countries, and teachers and guest artists came to us from 20 countries including Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Israel, Cyprus, France, the USA, Canada and Japan. During the Festival Week, August 7-11, 2024, more than 900 people participated in our mini-workshops and other hands-on events.
We ran two international youth music projects; YAM Ensemble, with young musicians from Germany, Greece and Turkey, and the Caravan Orchestra & Choir, with young musicians from Israel and Germany. On August 11th, YSW curated Erfurt's recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a daytime and evening program with more than 150 volunteers, musicians, performing artists and scholars. And all of this was just the tip of the iceberg. For many of us, the summer was a much needed reminder that people from very different backgrounds can come together and create a community built on trust, the thirst for knowledge, and a focus on shared histories and experiences.
Many thanks to everyone who gave their time, energy and creativity to make Yiddish Summer Weimar 2024 a success! Stay connected through our newsletter, the website and social media to learn the latest about plans for Yiddish Summer Weimar 2025.
Photo: Shendl Copitman
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