Songs From the Heart: The Story of Yiddish Music

Guest speaker: musician/musicologist Jonno Lightstone  

“The inner history of a people is contained in its songs,” wrote European Jewish scholar Rabbi Adolph Jellinek. Yiddish folk songs are a musical map of the Jewish people’s history – they document daily life and traditions, bear witness to our persecution, inspire us to be courageous, and remind us to laugh and love. From their inception in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, to the golden age of American Yiddish music and theatre, into the modern era of Klezmer and the current global revival, learn why Yiddish songs continue to resonate in our collective imaginations. Generously co-sponsored by the UJA Committee for Yiddish.

Jonno Lightstone is regarded as one of Toronto’s finest klezmer musicians. A multi-instrumentalist, equally at home on saxophone, clarinet and flute, he graduated from the Humber College Jazz program in 1990 and holds a Masters Degree in Ethnomusicology from York University. Jonno has led many bands that push the boundaries of klezmer music, including Klezmology, The Yiddish Swingtet, and Hu tsa tsa. He is a longtime collaborator with acclaimed Jazz guitarist Brian Katz, and they often perform as the duo Katz-Lightstone. An avid music educator, he is the musical director of Klezkonnection, Canada’s largest community klezmer orchestra. Jonno has given many lectures at the Miles Nadal JCC, including The Duelling Clarinetists: Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw; Are You Hep to the Jive? The Music of Cab Calloway, and last year’s virtual lecture Music Was His Mistress: The Sophisticated Sounds of Duke Ellington.

UJA Committee for Yiddish was created in the early 1960’s under the auspices of the Canadian Jewish Congress to coordinate, foster and promote Yiddish cultural activity in Toronto. To this day, the Committee for Yiddish continues to fulfil this goal through a variety of activities that include classes in Yiddish language and literature, theatre workshops, concerts and lectures, and through its support of Yiddish programming by various other Toronto organizations and groups. For more information please visit http://www.committeeforyiddish.com/