Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

We Are Here: Songs From the Holocaust

January 26, 2023
881 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019, USA

An evening of songs written in the ghettos and concentration camps of Nazi-occupied Europe and the former Soviet Union, drawn from 14 collections known as The Shoah Songbooks. The lineup of scheduled performers lists a rainbow coalition of three dozen cantors, pop artists, and Broadway stars, plus the La Guardia High School Senior Chorus. We’ll just mention Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera, Andrew Lippa, Jeff Morrow, Brenda Russell, Justin Jesso, and Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf, and among the cantors Rebecca Garfein and Yanky Lemmer, whose credits go on for days. His Eminence Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, is on the roster, too, though presumably not to sing. And let’s have an extra-special welcome for Steven Skybell, fresh off back-to-back stints as Tevye in Fiddler On the Roof in the Lyric Opera of Chicago remount of Barrie Kosky’s acclaimed Berlin production and Joel Grey’s historic off-Broadway Yiddish-language production (supertitled in English and Russian). Music direction by the talented Lee Musiker. —Matthew Gurewitsch