About the Show
World Music / Film Score
The Yellow Ticket is a multimedia event featuring a rare 1918 silent film and an original score by renowned klezmer violinist/vocalist/composer Alicia Svigals, performed live along with Toronto’s virtuoso new-music pianist Marilyn Lerner.
Pre-eminent film scholar Tom Gunning said about the score: “I believe this accompaniment to The Yellow Ticket is one of the most powerful I have heard. It evokes not only a sense of the contemporary context of the culture in which the film took place, but our awareness of what was done to it afterwards. The sound of piano, violin and the human voice evoke passion, energy and a profound sense of mourning, bridging the historical distance between us and this film as eloquently as does Pola Negri’s extraordinary face.
The Yellow Ticket has garnered:
- The Foundation for Jewish Culture’s annual new music commission
- A major grant from the Still Point Fund for Alicia to create a brand new digital restoration of the film
- A commission from Music of Remembrance in Seattle to write a new version of the score adding Seattle Symphony’s clarinetist Laura DeLuca (the program is also available in this version)
- A Trust for Mutual Understand grant to bring the work to Poland
About the Artists
Alicia Svigals
Alicia Svigals is the world’s foremost klezmer fiddler, a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics and a 2014 NEA MacDowell Fellow in composition.
Marilyn Lerner
Jazz pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner performs to acclaim internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana, from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. Her musical career has been marked by a deep exploration of traditional and free jazz, new music tinged improvisation, and Ashkenazic folk music. Lerner has appeared with Tito Puente, Gerry Hemingway, and Steve Lacy. In the New Jewish music scene, she performs with Adrienne Cooper, Frank London, Alicia Svigals and David Wall.
A prolific recording artist, her most recent work includes: Live in Madrid, (Cadence records), with New York based Ken Filiano-bass and Lou Grassi-drums, and the Ugly Beauties Trio with Matt Brubeck (the late great Dave’s youngest son!) cello and Nick Fraser, drums. She also tours and performs with the Dutch based avant-garde Ig Henneman Sextet :with Axel Dorner, Wilbert de Joode, Lori Freedman and Ab Baars.
