A project of the American Society for Jewish Music
www.jewishmusic-asjm.org

The Jewish Music Forum is an organization devoted to the study of music in Jewish life in all of its historical and contemporary diversity.  Founded in the fall of 2004 under the auspices of the American Society for Jewish Music, with the support of the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History, the Jewish Music Forum seeks to provide a thriving habitat for interdisciplinary dialogue and scholarly exchange in the growing academic field of Jewish musical studies as well as a critical intellectual resource for specialists across a spectrum that includes cantors, composers, performers, students, educators, artistic directors, journalists, and others from the fields of musicology, anthropology, literature, Jewish studies, and American studies. By linking together members of these communities, the Forum serves as an academic professional network and intellectual resource for all who are interested in the role of music in Jewish life.

"The St. Petersburg School: The Music of Leo Zeitlin (1884-1930)" by Paula Eisenstein Baker
with respondent Dr. Michael Steinlauf

Feb. 9th, 2012
Thursday, 7:00 P.M.
The YIVO Institute
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, New York 10011

Paula Eisenstein Baker with YIVO’s Sidney Krum Young Artists. Leo Zeitlin belonged to a group of early 20th- century young Russian-Jewish composers--mostly students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and members of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg--who were united by the idea of creating a Jewish national music movement. Fascinated by Zeitlin’s masterpiece “Eli Zion,” cellist Paula Eisenstein Baker started to investigate the life and works of this remarkable, but almost unknown, composer. The result was an important volume of chamber music coinciding with growing international interest in Jewish art music from early 20th-century Russia.

Paula Eisenstein Baker, Houston cellist and musicologist, is an authority on the early twentieth-century Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has published articles on composer and society member Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) in the YIVO Annual, the International Journal of Musicology and Shofar, and is co-editor of the volume of Zeitlin’s chamber music that will be published by A-R Editions, Inc. She has spoken about and performed works by members of the society for audiences throughout the United States, as well as in St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and London.

Michael C. Steinlauf, Ph.D., is associate professor of history at Gratz College. He writes and teaches about Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe and about Polish-Jewish relations. Steinlauf holds a master’s degree in English and comparative literature from Columbia University and a doctorate in Judaic studies from Brandeis University. Fluent in Yiddish and Polish, he has been to Poland as a Fulbright fellow and as project director for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In addition, he has been a senior research fellow at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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Click here to view PDF - Complete list of presenters:
JMF Lecture Series Jan. 2005 to April 2010

The Jewish Music Forum lecture/discussion series gratefully acknowledges the support of
the American Society for Jewish Music and the American Jewish Historical Society,
at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York City

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Last updated: Oct. 17, 2011.