Tumbala! The London Yiddish Song School

Sunday 12 August – Friday 17 August
Summer School in Yiddish Song 2012
SOAS University of London
Vernon Square Campus, Penton Rise, London WC1X 9EW

Tumbala! The London Yiddish Song Course, is for advanced singers who wish to embrace the rich Yiddish song repertoire. It will run from Sunday 12 August to Friday 17 August together with the Yiddish Language course Ot Azoy!. The unique aspect of this London Yiddish song course is that singers are enabled to study the vocabulary, syntax, grammar and pronunciation of the language in the mornings with the outstanding language of teachers of Ot Azoy. The afternoons will be devoted to masterclasses and workshops in style and interpretation with some of the world’s most revered teachers and performers of Yiddish song, Shura Lipovsky (Amsterdam), Polina Shepherd (Brighton) and Hilda Bronstein(London). Experience has shown that understanding the language adds enormously to the performance standard and to the satisfaction experienced by the students – and that there is a marked improvement noted by the teachers when students understand the language somewhat. You will also be amazed at how much you are able to learn about reading writing and speaking Yiddish in only one week.

I have had one of the best weeks of my life! It was, truly very emotional - full of outstanding teachers, singers, experiences, and song. I think the structure worked very well of Yiddish lessons in the morning and singing in the afternoon and I thought that the way leaders integrated teaching the language into the song sessions was excellent.

To register for Tumbala!, please download and use the 2012
registration form
Download a flyer
Information for participants
Download evaluation form

Read what Aron Gersh had to say about his experiences at Tumbala! 2011:

What a week that was ...

….We sang again, and again . . . and all in Yiddish. We thus learned much more about Yiddish culture and Yiddish real life through the words of the songs. Our teachers, were, as usual, the master singers, master teachers, master performers … Our specialist song faculty held masterclasses each day for performing artists, but a few of us bathtub balladeers were encouraged too to stand up and sing solo with all our hearts. They gave us all, always encouraging, never condemning criticism towards possible improvements we could try. I sang a song about ‘Mashiach vet kumen hayntiks jor’ (‘Messiah will come this year’ (though I personally would prefer it if he did not, so that I could still go back a few years to a few more of these most wonderful weeks we have of Yiddish culture.

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modified November 17, 2011

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