Music of the Ghetto connects Israelis and Palestinians: a project from a few years ago, today more relevant than ever!
8 February 2024
A few years ago, at the Venice Conservatory, a unique performance took place featuring the music of Israeli composer Shlomi Frige, now President, Artistic Director, and Founder of the Korczak Institute for New Music, performed by students from Tel Aviv University. An incredibly current event for the message of peace and universality it continues to convey.
Music of the Ghetto was hosted in various spaces of the Conservatory, where the rigor of classical music abandoned itself to improvisation to engage in dialogue with background sounds recorded directly from the streets, or rather the “calli” of Venice’s ancient Jewish ghetto.
“Ghetto is an idea”, Frige says, “it’s the idea of putting artificial barriers between people. Music and art, on the other hand, have no boundaries and connect people”.
The project originated from the collaboration between Frige, Giovanni Dinello from the Venice Conservatory, and Ofer Gazit, an ethnomusicologist from Tel Aviv University. Together with Israeli and Palestinian students, they collected sounds from the city to mix them with Frige’s compositions and perform them all together. A music inspired by the constant tension between beauty and life on one side and ghetto and limitations on the other.
Listen to it today: this music has an even more powerful impact and meaning!
The Korczak Institute for New Music
