Semer Reloaded

Maybe this project finds your interest and your support:

"A Golden Age of Jewish music almost forgotten - the songs captured in 30s' Berlin by Hirsch Lewin on his Semer label. “Semer Reloaded” brought this amazing music back to life with critically acclaimed concerts throughout Europe in 2012-15. Now it is our dream to record this music live in concert so that, 70 years after the Holocaust, the legacy of the Semer label can be passed on to present and future generations.    


From Artistic Director, Alan Bern:

We're asking for your help to cover the basic costs of the recording of “Semer Reloaded." With your support we can bring Hirsch Lewin's Semer Label and the legacy of Jewish musicians in Berlin in the 1920s-30s back to life, 70 years after the end of the Holocaust, with fresh interpretations, re-workings and arrangements of originals, to be recorded live by a world-class ensemble of artists based in Berlin and New York, such as Grammy winner Lorin Sklamberg, Daniel Kahn, Sasha Lurje and others.

It's an almost incredible story. Berlin in the 1920s was home to a true Golden Age of Jewish music and musicians. Then, in the 1930s, even as the Nazis came to power and brutally repressed Jews and Jewish culture, Hirsch Lewin's Semer label recorded dozens of Jewish artists for posterity, before they were silenced by the Holocaust. On November 9, 1938, SA hordes destroyed Hirsch's Hebraica/Judaica shop in Berlin's Scheunenviertel district, including 4,500 records and about 250 metal plates and the Semer label was shut down. For decades, the recordings were lost and virtually forgotten, until they were heroically recovered and restored by musicologist Rainer E. Lotz. In 2012, the Berlin Jewish Museum commissioned me (Alan) to create a concert of new arrangements of the archival recordings. To realize the project, I put together a great band that unites senior pioneers of Jewish music like Lorin Sklamberg and Paul Brody with the new generation of amazing performers such as Daniel Kahn, Sasha Lurje, Mark Kovnatskiy and others. The result is Semer Reloaded.

With your support, we can present this incredible music not only as an archive of 80-year-old recordings or for a few lucky concert audiences, but as living music for the whole world through a state-of-the-art album release with great sound quality. We've got a strong a supporter in the Gorki theatre in Berlin, which has agreed to host our recording sessions live in concert. We'll team up with London-based music producer Ben Mandelson, and Berlin-based Piranha Records will take on the task of producing a high-quality recording as well as publishing and distributing it. Only 80 seats will be available for the concerts on on the 3rd and 4th November: by contributing only 30 EUR to the campaign you can witness the recording first-hand!"

You will find more information via https://www.startnext.com/en/semer-reloaded.

And here is a report about Semer Reloaded from "3sat" that shows some insights, musical performances and the musicians involved in Semer Reloaded - Alan Bern, Paul Brody, Mark Kovnatskiy, Martin Lillich, Sasha Lurje, Fabian Schnedler and Lorin Sklamberg:
_ www.youtube.com/watch?t=12&v=1Xky4Omql5g.