The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater

Hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas
Theatrical Productions

Manager: Tim Fox
Management Territory: USA

This one really raises the roof. --Martin Bernheimer —Financial Times

The music was earthy and tuneful - a lot like popular European opera of the time. Its mass appeal was apparent. And, 113 years later, Davies Symphony Hall was sold out. --Richard Scheinin —San Jose Mercury News

About

Michael Tilson Thomas shares the stage with an orchestra and four singers who bring to life the story of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, grandparents of Michael Tilson Thomas.

Boris and Bessie emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in the 1880s and, while still in their teens, began to play major roles in the development of American Yiddish Theater. For Jewish immigrants of the late 19th and 20th centuries who settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Yiddish theater was a core component of daily life. It replaced touchstones . . . of Eastern European life (the shtetl marketplace, the shul, the rebbe), and provided a forum for the new ideas that were shaping the psychological, emotional, and moral transition to a new, American way of life.

In The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, Michael Tilson Thomas serves as a guide through the lives and repertoire of his grandparents. All the material is authentic - researched and reconstructed by The Thomashefsky Project over the years. The Thomashefsky Project was founded in July 1998 in order to rescue the story of the Thomashefskys and early American Yiddish theater's contribution to American cultural life. Through the work of the Project, many disintegrating scores have been located and preserved in order to recreate as true a version of the original works as possible.

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