Cellist Orit Messer-Yaakobi says the war reached even the planning of a baroque music festival in Jerusalem. “Then we had the [post-Oct. 7] war and, you know, things always resonate,” she said, explaining how earlier themes at the Witches? Festival—including fate, warrior women and healing women—took on new weight. The fifth edition opens October 16 and runs through October 17 at the YMCA and Hansen House. Its program traces women’s influence on music and culture, from medieval and ancient eras to 20th-century jazz.
Messer-Yaakobi, a longtime member and principal cellist of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra (JBO), says the festival gives participants room to examine one subject from several directions. David Shemer, the JBO’s founder, conductor and artistic director, initiated the festival. This year’s theme is Echo.
A Festival Built on Presence, Not Only Absence
The program focuses on women whose presence and work changed music, rather than only on those whose contributions were suppressed or overlooked. Messer-Yaakobi says each concert takes a different approach. “Each concert takes a different approach – either about women with initiative, women who wrote and performed their music, or patrons or muses, or heroines,” she said.
She was blunt about what the festival wants to avoid. “We want to give women their place without the [politically-oriented] crutches,” she said. “If you look at the concerts, you see that each ensemble, with its program, offers something very interesting. And the gender is of no importance. It is just by chance that the composer is a woman [with regard to the quality of the work in question].”
The festival also steers clear of what she called “run-of-the-mill stuff” and “bestsellers” such as Bach’s Magnificat. The orchestra invites outside artists and ensembles to propose programs, and the JBO hosts them. Messer-Yaakobi says that approach makes the festival varied and colorful.
Concerts Across Two Days
The opening concert, “Daphnis and the Winds of Love: A Balkan Myth,” takes place October 16 at 11 a.m. at Hansen House. Messer-Yaakobi will play cello alongside recorder player Doret Florentin and guitarist Gideon Bretler, with the Hakdoshot vocal threesome. The program moves from Greek mythology to contemporary material, with French Baroque music and folk melodies along the way.
That night at 10 p.m., “High Heels” brings swing music from the 1940s and 1950s to the YMCA Arcade. Three female vocalists and a piano-led jazz trio will perform outdoors. Messer-Yaakobi called it “something cute with a very different color,” then added, “You can just enjoy life.”
The “A Woman’s Song” recital explores love, motherhood, and war and peace through texts voiced by female characters, including mythological or religious figures and mothers. The festival says those texts form a storyline that is personal and universal, historical and relevant to the present.
On October 17 at 11 a.m., the YMCA hosts “Vienna-Weimar-Siberia: A Journey with Musical Women.” The Israeli Romantic Ensemble, a foursome led by clarinetist Gili Rinot, will play works by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Bach. The program considers women who worked behind the scenes as students, patrons, musicians and salon hosts. Mozart’s students included Franziska von Jacquin, for whom he composed Piano Sonata No. 14 and Fantasia in C minor. Thérèse von Trattner gave him accommodation and financial support, promoted his work and organized subscription concerts in Vienna in 1784, 242 years ago as of October 11, 2026. The program also salutes German Jewish philanthropist Sara Levy, Mendelssohn’s great-aunt, who supported his writing, and French cellist Lise Cristiani, whose musicianship prompted Mendelssohn to dedicate a piece in his Songs Without Words series to her.
Heroines, From Eve to Cleopatra
“The Golden Apple” features the Nari Ensemble quartet: soprano Liron Givoni, recorder player Naomi Hasson, cellist Yotam Haran and harpsichord player Guy Pardo. Its story follows an angel and a man searching for a woman worthy of a golden apple and capable of bringing the mother of Jesus into the world. They meet biblical heroines, from Eve to Esther, portrayed through Baroque works from Bohemia, Italy, England and Germany.
At 1:30 p.m. on October 17, “Virtuosissima cantatrice” celebrates Barbara Strozzi, a 17th-century Venetian composer and vocalist. People praised her work, and her scores ranked among the few by women to reach print. Strozzi was the illegitimate child of a servant and ran an important music salon. Soprano Daniela Skorka will sing, with violinist Kati Debretzeni and Shemer on harpsichord.
The festival closes at 8:30 p.m. at the YMCA with “Cleopatra and Giulio.” Mezzo-soprano Shaked Bar performs Cleopatra, moving between her and Julius Caesar, while the JBO plays music by Handel, Johann Adolph Hasse, Antonio Sartorio and Carl Heinrich Graun. Messer-Yaakobi says the finale brings the full JBO ensemble together; other concerts use chamber ensembles.
Why This Matters: A music festival in Jerusalem isn’t a diplomatic event, and its organizers insist they want women’s work judged on quality rather than political message. Still, Messer-Yaakobi’s remark that the war made earlier themes “resonate” reminds audiences that cultural life in the city continues alongside conflict and loss. Programs built on women’s creativity, patronage and endurance—and a recital about motherhood, war and peace—give audiences room to reflect on the human cost of violence without a political script. In a region where public conversation is dominated by security and politics, these two days of concerts offer a smaller, quieter measure of what ordinary life, and its preservation, looks like.