Jerusalem's Witches? Festival will take place October 16-17 at the YMCA and Hansen House, with concerts tracing women's influence on music and culture from ancient eras and medieval times to 20th-century jazz. Its fifth edition takes Echo as its theme, focusing on women whose presence and work changed music.
David Shemer, founder-conductor-artistic director of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra (JBO), initiated the festival. The orchestra performs predominantly baroque scores. This edition's program examines women's roles as composers, performers, patrons, students, muses and heroines.
Women at the center of the program
Cellist-conductor Orit Messer-Yaakobi, a longtime JBO member and principal cellist, said the festival lets participants study a subject from several perspectives. “I am very happy with the festival because it allows us to take an immersive approach to a particular subject,” she said. Inviting other ensembles, she added, lets participants “research and deeply explore a specific topic.”
Messer-Yaakobi said the festival avoids “run-of-the-mill stuff” and “bestsellers” such as Bach's Magnificat. It presents music in what she described as beautiful locations, with very good ensembles. Earlier editions used themes including fate, warrior women and healing women. “Then we had the [post-Oct. 7] war and, you know, things always resonate,” she said.
For this edition, she said, “Each concert takes a different approach – either about women with initiative, women who wrote and performed their music, or patrons or muses, or heroines.” The festival aims to give women their place “without the [politically-oriented] crutches,” she said, adding that “the gender is of no importance” and that a composer being a woman is “just by chance” in relation to the quality of the work.
The opening concert, “Daphnis and the Winds of Love: A Balkan Myth,” is scheduled for October 16 at 11 a.m. at Hansen House. Messer-Yaakobi will perform on cello with recorder player Doret Florentin and guitarist Gideon Bretler, accompanied by the Hakdoshot vocal threesome. The program travels from Greek mythology to contemporary material, taking in French Baroque music and folk melodies.
At 10 p.m. that day, “High Heels” brings swing music from the 1940s and 1950s to the YMCA Arcade. The outdoor performance features three female vocalists and a piano-led jazz trio. Messer-Yaakobi called it “something cute with a very different color,” adding, “You can just enjoy life.”
From patrons to performers
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 describes these texts as a storyline that feels 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 perform 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, and Thérèse von Trattner. She gave him accommodation and financial support, promoted his work and organized subscription concerts in Vienna in 1784. Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 14, 15 and 16 featured in those concerts. The program also recognizes German Jewish philanthropist Sara Levy, Mendelssohn's great-aunt, who supported his writing, and French cellist Lise Cristiani, whose musicianship led Mendelssohn to dedicate a piece in his Songs Without Words series to her.
The October 17 program includes “Virtuosissima cantatrice” at the YMCA at 1:30 p.m. The title translates as “the most virtuoso female singer.” This concert celebrates Barbara Strozzi, a 17th-century Venetian composer and vocalist whose work drew praise and whose scores ranked among the few by women to be printed. Strozzi was the illegitimate child of a servant and ran an important music salon. Soprano Daniela Skorka will sing, accompanied by violinist Kati Debretzeni and Shemer on harpsichord.
The festival closes at the YMCA on October 17 at 8:30 p.m. with “Cleopatra and Giulio.” Mezzo-soprano Shaked Bar will perform as Cleopatra, while the JBO plays music by Handel, Johann Adolph Hasse, Antonio Sartorio and Carl Heinrich Graun. The arias explore the relationship between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, with Bar moving between the two characters.