Celebrating Jewish American Heritage in May

Joe Segal at the microphone in the mid-70s. Standing behind the drums is the great Chicago jazz drummer Wilbur Campbell.  (Photo credit: Jeff Lowenthal.)

The month of May is officially recognized as the Jewish American Heritage Month. The month celebrates the more than 350-year history, culture, and achievements of Jews in the United States.  

Get your culture on in May with a multitude of offerings: 

Howard Reich’s opera 

Howard Reich is an award-winning journalist. The son of a Polish-Jewish mother who survived the Holocaust as a teenager, he was born in Chicago and, at the age of 10, moved with his parents to Skokie. 

Reich graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in piano performance. Then, on another type of keyboard, he covered music for the Chicago Tribune for more than 20 years. Along the way, Reich has authored six books, ranging from a study of Van Cliburn, to one of Jelly Roll Morton. 

The Holocaust has always been a personal subject for him. His four-year friendship with Elie Wiesel, near the very end of the Nobelist’s life is now the essential element of Reich’s The Dialogue of Memories. 

Reich wrote the libretto for this opera in collaboration with composer Tom Cipullo. And, following two initial performances on the west coast, it will be performed at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building. 

This chamber piece, commissioned by the Seattle-based Music of Remembrance commission, is described as “a pathbreaking new opera with lyrical beauty and emotional honesty that illuminates how we can reach under yesterday’s generations and open doors of misery, hope and compassion.”  

It brings three performers to the stage—playing Wiesel, Reich, and his mother Sonia Reich. And it captures the men of two generations contemplating a cataclysmic event, as well as the consequences of the Buchenwald death camp in 1945. Sonia survived the Holocaust in a shtetl in Ukraine from 1942 to the end of the war, after which she emigrated to the U.S.  

Sonia survived the Holocaust in a shtetl in Ukraine from 1942 to the end of the war, after which she emigrated to the U.S. But in 2021, 60 years after the war, she began to hallucinate as she suffered from her past trauma and stress disorder. 

The Dialogue of Memories will be performed on May 23 at 7:30 p.m. and May 24 at 3 p.m. on the stage of the Studebaker Theater in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Ave. 

To learn more, visit fineartsbuilding.com. 

A toast to Joe Segal 

L’chaim! to the late Joe Segal, who founded the Jazz Showcase, Chicago’s oldest and most historic jazz club, now owned and operated by his son, Wayne. 

Born in Philadelphia, Segal was drafted into the Air Force in 1944. After the war, in 1947, Segal founded the Showcase while studying at Chicago’s Roosevelt University. He went on to run his showcase in what is estimated to be 64 different locations until he opened a formal club on Rush Street. Since 2008, the Showcase has been located at 806 S. Plymouth in the Dearborn Station building, in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood.  

In 2014, Segal was given the rare honor of being chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts as an NEA Jazz Master. 

The Showcase has been the stage for the greatest names in jazz, including Count Basie, Bill Evans, Sun Ra, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakely, the Jazz Messengers, and countless other international and Chicago-based musicians. 

Segal, who died in 2020, was so admired by the City of Chicago that the street in front of the Jazz Showcase was named Joe Segal Way. 

Renowned record producer Zev Feldman, who has been given the keys to the Segal archives some 15 years after first meeting him, is celebrating Segal’s 100^th by releasing five never-before-heard albums featuring legendary jazz musicians Joe Henderson, Ahmad Jamal, Yusef Lateef, and Mal Waldron plus one by the great singer/songwriter Terry Callier. The first of an ongoing series from the Segal archives are now out on vinyl and also available on CD. 

“Joe Segal was one of the greatest jazz impresarios in American history,” said Feldman, co-President of Resonance Records. “His archive allows us to literally travel back in time and witness these master musicians honing their craft… [this] allows us to celebrate Joe and his rich legacy in this music.” 

The CDs are available from Resonance Records at resonancerecords.org and through retailers like Amazon.com. LPs may be available through RSD MRKT (Indie Record Store Marketplace) at rsdmrkt.com. 

A new play by a classic Yiddish author 

The Cunning Folk Theatre Company of Boston will be making its first visit to the Midwest, with its production at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture in Lakeview of Stories: a new play based on a tale by the classic Yiddish author Y.L. Peretz. 

Set in the bustling multi-cultural Warsaw of the turn of the 20th century, the play follows Noah, a young Jewish writer who “spends his day trying to craft a story to tell a woman whom he is definitely not in love with (or so he tells himself).” 
 

As he builds his story world, various influences come into play—ranging from European fairy tales to rabbinic parables, stories of the events of Jewish history, and memories of moments in his own life. 

Presented by Cunning Folk Theatre at Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture in Lakeview (2936 N. Southport Ave), the show will run May 27 and 28 at 7 p.m., and May 31 at 2 p.m. Learn more at athenaeumcenter.org. 

Evgeny Kissin at Symphony Center 

Pianist Evgeny Kissin joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for two performances last month, playing piano concertos by Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Prokofiev. He will return as a soloist on May 17, playing an eras-spanning recital of five Mazurkas by Chopin, as well as Beethoven’s “Sonata No. 7 in D Major,” Schumann’s “Kreisleriana, Op. 16,” and Mayaskovsky’s “Sonata No. 2.” 

For tickets, visit cso.org. 

Hedy Weiss, a longtime Chicago arts critic, was the Theater and Dance Critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1984 to 2018. She currently writes for WTTW-TV’s website and contributes to its Chicago Tonight program.