Festival Sefardí 2024
May 17-19, 2024
Poetry, Stories, Music and Art
Tickets | Schedule | Programa en Español
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Lone Piñon in Concert!
Esteban Rael’s Return Ceremony!
Dialog Between Enrique Lamadrid and Demetria Martínez: Songs of a Troublemaker.
Poetry Concert: Subterranean Rivers of Migration and Secrecy: The New Mexican Sephardic Experience!
Art Reception and Portrait Painting Demonstration with Leo Neufeld: New Mexico Landscapes, Streetscapes and Selected Portraits.
Storytelling: Telling Our Stories - Personal Stories Told by Our Sephardic Friends.
Creative Writing Session with Hershel Weiss: Writing Our Stories.
Creativity Break with Sally Bergen: A fun & relaxed hour to create a card to honor Esteban Rael and his Rite of Return.
Lone Piñon is a New Mexican string band, or “orquesta típica”, whose music celebrates the integrity and diversity of our region's cultural roots. With fiddles, upright bass, guitars, accordions, vihuela, and bilingual vocals, they play a wide spectrum of the traditional music that is at home in New Mexico.
This concert, especially prepared for the festival, will embrace the Sephardic thread in the beautiful tapestry of New Mexico’s peoples.
The repetoire will include: a few old New Mexico tunes that preserve musical elements that may reach back to the time of the expulsion; a norteño version of a ballad that is sung as part of Sephardic traditions as well as across the Spanish-speaking world; a song in Ladino from Greece in a New Mexico arrangement; a liturgical text set to a Northern NM melody and norteño musical aesthetic; "Los Israelitas", an old waltz from NM; and an Ashkenazi Yiddish song about crypto-Jews in Spain after 1492, in New Mexico Spanish translation.
The festival is also honored to welcome back historian, folklorist, author, translator, poet, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of New Mexico, Enrique Lamadrid. Professor Lamadrid is the author of numerous books and will be speaking about the life and times of Luis S. Martínez and his grand-daughter Demetria Martínez.
Poet and writer Demetria Martínez is well known in New Mexico for her work in the Central American Sanctuary Movement as well as her journalism and amazing poetry.
Festival Sefardí features a trilingual poetry concert with Demetria reading the English versions of her own poems (some of which are written especially for the festival) as well as the poetry of Isabelle Medina Sandoval and Anita Rodriguez. The Spanish versions will be performed by actor and festival favorite Sandra Marroquín Evans. With simultaneous ASL interpretation.
Nationally recognized artist Leo Neufeld will give a portrait painting demonstration and talk at the opening of an art show featuring his New Mexico landscapes, streetscapes, and selected portraits.
Esteban Rael, Nahalat Shalom’s beloved director, will have his return ceremony at the festival with Batya Podos, Cantor Beth Cohen, and Rabbi Min officiating, and he will be honored in a special luncheon.
Other events are planned as well, including personal storytelling by New Mexican Sephardim, a creative writing session, and more.
All events will take place at Nahalat Shalom. The Lone Piñon and Poetry concerts will also take place on Zoom.
More info: hershel@hershelweiss.com