Four Choir Concert: Celebrating Maslenitsa and Purim

Just finishing the celebration of Maslenitsa, the much-loved Russian Butter Week, and in preparation for Purim, the most fun Jewish holiday of the year, four choirs come together to perform a concert of East European folk and classics.

Participating choirs:
The London Russian Choir
The Brighton & Hove Russian Choir
The London Yiddish Choir
The Brighton & Hove Chutzpah Choir

Polina Shepherd (Russia / UK), the leader of all four choirs, will welcome you to the world of Russian and Yiddish music by presenting each song.
The concert will include an interval and refreshments will be available.

Yiddish songs are hugely varied. Some are spiritual and liturgical, others come from the Yiddish theatre and cinema, or describe the diverse lives of Jewish people across Eastern Europe. The London Yiddish Choir and Chutzpah explore all these traditions and builds on them, adding four-part arrangements of folk songs, contemporary compositions and some improvisation, inviting the audience to sing along and join the singers in celebration of Spring and Culture.

The Brighton & Hove and the London Russian Choirs promote a wide range of music from Russia including traditional lyrical songs, ritual calendar music for pagan holidays, wedding songs, dance songs and other folklore. Another part of the repertoire is Art Songs (Romances) from the 18th-19th centuries (much loved by native Russians). as well as classical pieces by Russian composers (Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky etc).

The choirs are led by Polina Shepherd under the umbrella of The Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience , which covers many aspects of vocal music, from solo voice to large scale choral improvisation, and from highly arranged and conducted choir pieces to smaller chamber groups.