Show One Productions Presents Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs Of World War II

Yiddish Glory resurrects anti-fascist music that documents Nazi atrocities which were miraculously discovered in a former Soviet archive in Kiev, Ukraine. The songs were written by Holocaust victims and survivors in the Soviet Union during World War II, and will be performed live at Toronto's Koerner Hall on Tuesday, August 28 to open the 2018 Ashkenaz Festival.

The concert is presented by Show One Productions, https://showoneproductions.ca/event/yiddish-glory-20180828/.

Many of the songs are grassroots accounts of the Nazi genocide against Jews in Ukraine at sites such as Babi Yar, Pechora and Tulchin, while others are explicit descriptions of resistance and revenge. They were collected by a team of Jewish Soviet ethnomusicologists led by Moisei Beregovsky during the war, but shortly afterwards, during Stalin's anti-Jewish purge, the members were arrested, their work confiscated, and they died thinking the music was lost to history. In the early 2000s, a lucky coincidence brought University of Toronto Professor Anna Shternshis to Kiev, where she learned that the music had actually survived in the intervening decades following the researchers' arrests, and in the years since, has led the research project to restore these songs.

"Yiddish Glory gives voice to Jewish children, women and refugees whose lives were shattered by horrific violence of World War II," said Professor Shternshis. "They never got to sing their music in public. When I consider that their songs will be performed by world-class musicians at Koerner Hall, it is unbelievably humbling and exciting."

Yiddish Glory features an all-star ensemble of virtuosi from the worlds of classical, jazz, and Roma and Jewish folk music, including:

Sophie Milman: Juno Award winning vocalist

Psoy Korolenko: Legendary Russian singer-songwriter

Loyko: The world-renowned Gypsy trio from St. Petersburg, Russia, led by violin virtuoso Sergei Erdenko with Artur Gorbenko (violin) and Mikhail Savichev (guitar),

Julian Milkis: Widely considered among the world's greatest living clarinetists

David Buchbinder: Juno Award winning trumpeter

Sergiu Popa: Roma accordion virtuoso

Beth Silver: Multiple award-winning cellist

Isaac Rosenberg: Vocals

Historian Anna Shternshis will deliver an introduction.

"It gives me goose bumps to present this concert," says Svetlana Dvoretsky of Show One Productions. "When we first introduced this music to the world at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts in 2016, the hall was sold out in no time and extra seats had to be added on stage. We are fulfilling our promise to bring the concert to downtown Toronto, and urge people to buy their tickets early, as demand is sure to be even greater."

Yiddish Glory's debut recording, "The Lost Songs of World War II" was recently released on Six Degrees Records. It has garnered over 100 rave reviews, TV, radio and print articles around the world, attracting such fervent praise as the following:

Founded in 1995, the biennial Ashkenaz Festival is North America's largest celebration of global Jewish music and culture. The 12th Ashkenaz Festival will take place August 28 to September 3 in Toronto, at Harbourfront Centre and other venues around the GTA. The Festival will once again feature 250+ artists from across Canada and around the world, including Israel, Russia, Poland, Italy, Australia, Brazil, and the US. The weeklong celebration of mostly free events will simultaneously showcase diversity and cross-culturalism within the Jewish music and arts world, while also delving deeply into the Yiddishkayt that has always been at the core of the Festival. This year's Festival will shine an enhanced spotlight on women in Jewish music and culture, highlighting great female artists, past and present, and conveying their centrality in creating, maintaining and evolving Jewish musical and artistic traditions. www.ashkenaz.ca, www.facebook.com/ashkenazfestival, www.twitter.com/ashkenazfest

Founded by Toronto impresario Svetlana Dvoretsky 15 years ago, Show One Productions (showoneproductions.ca) has brought many of the world's most groundbreaking and innovative perfuming arts projects to Canada including Baryshnikov/Brodsky, the opera gala Trio Magnifico featuring the late Dmitri Hvorostovsky with Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov, St. Peterburg's Eifman Ballet and The Giacomo Variations with Hollywood legend John Malkovich.

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