The Yellow Ticket
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.
Alicia Svigals is the world's foremost klezmer fiddler, a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics and a 2014 NEA MacDowell Fellow in composition. “The Yellow Ticket,” a very early production of the German film company UFA-Pagu, was made at the end of World War I and on the eve of the Russian revolution. It stars an adolescent Pola Negri, who would later become the legendary femme fatale of the silent era, and tells the story of a young Jewish woman from a Polish shtetl who is constrained by anti-Semitic restrictions to lead a double life in a brothel while attempting to study medicine in Tsarist Russia. The film includes precious footage of the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw and the people who once lived there.
Alicia received a Foundation for Jewish Culture New Jewish Music commission for this project. She was also commissioned by Music of Remembrance in Seattle to arrange the score for trio including Seattle Symphony clarinetist Laura DeLuca, and performs both versions on tour.
“ 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. ”
— Professor Tom Gunning, University of Chicago Department of Art History, Department of Cinema and Media Studies
UPCOMING SHOWS
See calendar
PAST SHOWS
The Yellow Ticket
The Ashokan Center
Olivebridge, NY
May 20, 2018 7:30 PM
The Yellow Ticket
National Sawdust
Brooklyn, NY
May 19, 2018 7 PM
The Yellow Ticket
With pianist Donald Sosin
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
March 27, 2018
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto/Pordenone Silent Film Festival
Pordenone, Italy
October 1, 2017
Wellesley College
Jewett Art Center
September 23, 2017, 3 PM
University of Colorado at Boulder
Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center
September 15, 2017, 8 PM
Vassar College, Villard Room
September 10, 2017, 7 PM
Emory University
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
September 7, 2017, 8 PM
Michigan State University
March 25, 2017, 7:30 PM
San Francisco JCC
January 19, 2017, 7 PM
Stanford University, CA
January 18, 2017, 7:30 PM
Virginia Film Festival/ University of VA
November 6, 2016
Kinoteka, Warsaw, Poland
September 8, 2016, 7pm
Kino Kijow Centrum, Cracow, Poland
September 5, 2016, 7pm
White Stork Synagogue, Wroclaw, Poland
September 3, 2016, 9pm
Brandeis University, Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts
April 14, 2016
Brooklyn Heights Synagogue
April 9, 2016
Cornell University
April7, 2016
Grinnell College
November 21, 2015
Cinematheque
University of Wisconsin, Madison
November 6, 2015
Detroit Institute of Art
April 24, 2015
With Seattle Symphony clarinetist Laura DeLuca!
Irvington Town Hall
Irvington, NY
April 19, 2015
Kenyon College, OH
March 28, 2015
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
September 21, 2014
Ashkenaz Festival, Toronto
Harbourfront Centre Theatre
August 31, 2014
Detroit Institue of Art
Presented by Cinetopia Film Festival
With Seattle Symphony clarinetist Laura DeLuca!
June 8, 2014
Benaroya Hall, Seattle
Commissioned and presented by Music of Remembrance
Premiere of new version of the score for violin, clarinet and piano, with clarinetist Laura DeLuca of the Seattle Symphony.
May 12, 2014
Swarthmore College, PA
Lang Concert Hall
Panel discussion with the performers and Robert Weinberg (Swarthmore Dept of History), Laurie Bernstein (Rutgers Department of History) and Barbara Milewski (Swarthmore Department of Music) to follow.
April 4, 2014
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
March 1, 2014
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Scheuer Chapel, Cincinnati
Mayerson JCC Jewish and Israeli Film Festival opening night gala
February 8, 2014
Chisuk Emuna Congregation, Harrisburg, PA
November 17, 2013
MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA
November 16, 2013
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Presented by the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston, the Houston Cinema Arts Society and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
November 7, 2013
Composers and Klezmers: Alicia Svigals on Bartók, Bloch, and the Score to The Yellow Ticket
Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston
November 6, 2013
University of Chicago, Logan Center for the Arts
October 26, 2013
The Gershman Y, Philadelphia
Co-presented with the National Museum of American Jewish History
May 9, 2013
National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadephia
Special event in conjunction with May 9 screening of the Yellow Ticket.
Acoustic Conversations: Women in Music. A panel discussion at the with Alicia Svigals, Jeri Lynne Johnson, Founding Music Director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, and Magdaliz Roura, Puerto Rican singer of folk and traditional music. Moderated by Andrea Clearfield, award-winning composer.
May 5, 2013
New Center for Arts and Culture at Coolidge Corner Theater, Boston
Co-presented by Boston Jewish Music Festival in collaboration with the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Followed by a panel discussion with scholars from Brandeis and Harvard.
April 29, 2013
Southwest Michigan Jewish Film Festival, Kalamazoo
April 21, 2013
Coral Gables Art Cinema, Miami
Presented by Next@19 in collaboration with the Miami International Film Festival
March 3, 2013
Vancouver
Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz International Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts at the Norman Rothstein Theatre
February 17, 2013
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York
Walter Reade Theater
The New York Jewish Film Festival, a collaboration between the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
January 10, 2013
Washington DCJCC: Washington Jewish Music Festival and Washington Jewish Film Festival
May 21, 2012