Starting this Saturday, October 26 and running until Sunday, November 3, The Rady Jewish Community Centre at 123 Doncaster is holding an event that highlights the vastness and depth that is found in Jewish cultures from around the world.
Called JFest, this festival will display an eclectic showcase of Jewish multidisciplinary art, encompassing not only Eastern European traditions, but also Sephardic, Mizrachi, and Israeli culture and all manner of cross-cultural fusion.
There will be art created by Manitoba Jewish Artists, various workshops, musical performances, and kids' programs. The goal is to reimagine culture and welcome a new generation of people of all faiths, backgrounds, and demographics.
This is the inaugural JFest. It is very much a collaborative effort that harnesses the talents and skills of several personnel at the Rady Centre. The Director is Laura Marjovsky, Shira Newman is the Art Exhibit Curator, Amy Karlinsky is the Visual Arts Advisor, Natali Halberthal is the producer of Yeladudes! which is a festival for children and finally Karla Berbrayer is the Musical Producer for the festival.
The purpose of JFest is to expose audiences to the variety of Jewish culture that is out there. In talking about the musical component of the Festival Karla Berbrayer says, “We just felt it was time for a different variety of different types of music to be showcased and we felt that JFest gave us the ability to reach out to different parts of the world where we have Jewish culture represented and expose our audiences to different kinds of music that one may not anticipate being presented by the Rady JCC.” Regarding the team Berbrayer says, “We all represent different aspects of that spectrum, and we wanted to put together a festival that really highlighted... for all different age groups... different aspects of Jewish culture.”
The musical piece of the festival consists of four musical acts.
On Tuesday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Berney Theatre at the Rady Centre, JFest features the amazing Czech-Canadian, storyteller, musicologist, and singer-songwriter Lenka Lichtenberg. A child star in Czechia, she has been performing all her life and in 2023 won a Juno Award for best Global Music Album of the Year with her CD called Thieves of Dreams.
The disc uses poetry that was written by her grandmother in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. It combines these powerful words with Lichtenberg’s amazing music.
The name of the concert is The Secret Poetess of Terezin. In describing the show Berbrayer says, “It is based on her grandmother’s poetry and her grandmother’s life. It’s a multimedia concert. Lenka is a very talented performer, she performs on guitar, the piano, she sings...there will be projections on a screen showing some of the poetry. I describe it almost like a theatre concert...there is a lot of storytelling involved...it could be called a theatre piece as well”
The next concert in the festival takes place on Thursday, October 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Berney Theater. This concert features a Winnipeg audience favorite, the drag queen Lady Muse, and her band The Inspirations performing the music of Amy Winehouse.
Winehouse was Jewish and Berbrayer jumped at the chance to see if Lady Muse could perform a show consisting of Winehouse’s music, while at the same time touching on elements about her life. “This is a full evening of Amy Winehouse music...now, the way Lady Muse is doing it is very authentic. It’s very raw, as we know Amy Winehouse’s life was not an easy life...there was lots of unhappiness, so there is nothing hidden in this show. This is Amy Winehouse’s music the way Winehouse would have presented it.”
Lady Muse will be joined by a full band, with three extra singers added. “It’s going to be an amazing show...I think if you love Amy Winehouse music this is the show for you,” says Berbrayer.
The next concert in JFest is on Saturday, November 1st at 8 p.m. at the Berney Theatre. It features the music of Burt Bacharach performed by one of Winnipeg’s finest jazz and pop singers, Jennifer Hanson.
Bacharach, aside from his successful solo career, wrote 52 Top 40 hits, for the likes of The Carpenters, Dionne Warwick, Christopher Cross and Tom Jones amongst many others. Many of his songs have become standards in the American songbook and in the pop music lexicon. Songs such as, Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, That’s What Friends Are for, (They Long to be) Close to you, and the list goes on and on.
In talking about Bacharach’s catalogue and the show Berbrayer says, “You can just go on and on with the Burt Bacharach songs that people go ‘Oh! Did Burt Bacharach write that?’ because he was such a prolific composer. There is so much material it’s almost like you could do more than one show. It’s going to be a fun show with a great band. Most people will be humming songs and singing along throughout the course of the performance.”
Jennifer Hanson and guitarist Larry Roy have put together this program and, in the process, put together a band that consists of some of the best musicians in the city. This is going to be a remarkable show.
The fourth musical performer for JFest is the Israeli Singer-songwriter Idan Raichel. He is performing on Sunday, October 27th at 7:30 p.m. at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. This concert is sold out, but it is quite a coup to have him here in Winnipeg. Berbrayer says, “He’s an Israeli superstar. I've been wanting to get him to Winnipeg for years, and the stars aligned, and we were able to bring him to Winnipeg. Idan is an ambassador for peace, and he has worked with so many different musicians of so many different backgrounds...all over the world...he is the perfect person to help launch JFest.”
The inaugural JFest is sure to be something very special. The festival wants to embrace both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences of all demographics and expose people to the width and breadth of Jewish culture.
JFest takes place Saturday, October 26th and runs until Sunday, November 3, at The Rady Jewish Community Centre at 123 Doncaster.