The Gertie Kessler Memorial Concert
30 August @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
This Women’s Month, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre presents a concert celebrating women through Yiddish song. Singers Caely-Jo Levy and Leigh Nudelman weave together stories and songs that trace the rich emotional landscape of Yiddish through women’s voices and experiences.
Together with their all-women band, they journey from lullabies and love songs to tales of migration, surviving the Holocaust, resistance and hope. Discover the enduring power and beauty of Yiddish song: a living archive of memory, humour, longing and resilience.
Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop will be open until 16:00. Please pop in for refreshments before the concert.
Performers:
Caely-Jo Levy (lead vocalist)
Caely-Jo Levy has worked professionally as a singer, actress, dancer and choreographer for over two decades. As a vocalist, she founded and fronts the band Yiddish, and also performs with the klezmer/Balkan band Playing With Fire. She has sung jazz standards alongside some of South Africa’s finest jazz musicians.
Caely-Jo works across both stage and screen as an actor and choreographer. Her recent television and film credits include White Lies, A Scam Called Love, The Emerald Purse and Pretty How Town.
Leigh Nudelman (lead vocalist)
Leigh Nudelman is a multidisciplinary creative practitioner whose work spans performance, writing, music and visual art, while she explores Jewish identity, womanhood, family history and the layered histories of Johannesburg.
After completing a Masters in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London, she has developed work across theatre, music, dance, research and ritual. Her long-running Yiddish music project has been performed throughout South Africa, as well as internationally, and recently featured in the documentary Yiddle Yiddle On.
Her current interdisciplinary project, Ten Things, weaves ancient Jewish texts and personal stories into what she describes as a feminist grotesque midrash. Leigh is also co-founder of 9th Street and Beis Clef, two Johannesburg-based initiatives exploring Jewish creativity, ritual and community.
As a vocalist, with a particular love for Jewish music, Leigh sings soprano as a soloist with Beit Emanuel and the African Renaissance Ensemble.
Tulla Eckhart (backup vocals and guitar)
Kristel Birkholst (violin)
Margot Smythe (cello)