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Casco Bay Tummlers & The Thinking Heart, Portland, ME, 30 Apr 2009

The Thinking Heart - and - The Casco Bay Tummlers
History in Poetry & Music
Thursday, April 30th, 7:30 (doors open at 7)
suggested donation - $12
SPACE Gallery - 538 Congress St., Portland

This is going to be a lovely and moving performance. We're happy to be sharing the stage with our friends from The Thinking Heart - and we're looking forward to getting back together after our annual winter hiatus. The evening will include a moving theater piece and some joyous klezmer music. We hope you can join us.

More about The Thinking Heart and the evening's performances:

The Thinking Heart, an ensemble performance work in two voices, with cello, is based on the writings of a Dutch
woman, Etty Hillesum, who died in the Holocaust. The evening’s performances celebrate the release of a CD of The Thinking Heart, which has been recorded by Old Port Records, of Lewiston, ME. www.oldportrecords.com. The program will begin with The Thinking Heart, followed by a concert set with the Casco Bay Tummlers.

Etty Hillesum, a Jewish woman who lived in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, wrote a luminous diary and over 70 letters, collected and published together in a book, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum. The journal and letters were written over two years, between 1941 and ‘43, ending with her transport to Auschwitz, where she died at 29.
The Thinking Heart is an original arrangement of the diaries and letters, constellated as poems, written by Martin Steingesser, and presented by him and Judy Tierney with cellist Robin Jellis.

“Beautifully done, the combination of voices and cello extraordinary,” said , Assistant Director of Wiggin Memorial Library, in Stratham, NH. “Profoundly moving.”

“Etty inspires wonder, deepening appreciation for the kind of courage that can stay a hostile course in service of life and spirit,” Steingesser says. “Here is a tragic story heightened to the finest moral and aesthetic pitch by Etty’s determination, courage and ability to transform the experience in her writing.”

The Casco Bay Tummlers have been performing klezmer music since 1988, their repertoire ranging from traditional klezmer dance tunes to soulful, sephardic songs and high energy Balkan music. Presenting a unique sound and stage performance, they have released three CD's and have been featured at festivals in the US and Europe. "Fun and frolic, but also pathos and yearning abound,” wrote the Greater Boston Flute Association. “This is emotionally charged music, played with abandon by musicians who are clearly comfortable with each other."

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