Mizmorim Festival 2021

For the seventh time, the Mizmorim Festival in Basel from January 21 to 24, 2021, under the artistic direction of Israeli clarinettist Michal Lewkowicz, will enable diverse encounters between classical Jewish and Western music.

A total of seven concerts and two family performances at five venues (Gare du Nord, Zunftsaal im Schmiedenhof, Stadtcasino Basel, Unternehmen Mitte and Bird's Eye Jazz Club) are on the program over the four days of the festival. Due to the current coronavirus measures, the concerts (with the Gringolts Quartet and the VEIN Trio, among others) will probably be held in a particularly exclusive setting.

Music comes from Bohemia. The historical landscape with the capital city of Prague in the west of the Czech Republic has always been a European region in which religious and ethnic contrasts have clashed. The diversity of Bohemian culture is also characterized by the interaction of Czech, German and Jewish influences.

The seventh Mizmorim Festival presents a fascinating selection of classics and rarities of Bohemian-Czech music under the motto "Bohemian Rhapsody". "Music is the life of the Czechs", said one of their most important composers, Bedřich Smetana. His "Moldau", whose main theme is echoed in the Israeli national anthem, as well as compositions by Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů continue to captivate people all over the world with their immortal melodies.

As a result of the National Socialist occupation from 1939, renowned 20th century Czech composers such as Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, Pavel Haas and Gideon Klein were subjected to repression and persecution. As a result, the fact that they had made a significant contribution to the development of 20th century music by adopting modernist tendencies and combining them with elements of jazz, Moravian and Jewish folk music as well as synagogue melodies was forgotten.

The aim of the Mizmorim Festival 2021 is to bring this diverse and cosmopolitan musical tradition to life and allow it to enter into a lively dialog with selected works of contemporary music (including those by Eleni Ralli, the winner of the Mizmorim Composition Competition 2021) - freely associated in surprising concert programs presented by renowned international artists, the "bohemians" of our time.