The Ancient Law: A Live Music and Silent Movie Event
Original score composed and performed by Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin
Thursday, November 3, 2022 | 7 p.m. | Casadesus Recital Hall
Performance is free and open to the public
Q&A with artists to follow the performance
Runtime: 128 minutes
Join us at 7 p.m. on November 3rd at Binghamton University’s Casadesus Recital Hall for this campus first: a screening of The Ancient Law, a path-breaking film from the Weimar-era director, Ewald A Dupont, featuring the exquisite musical accompaniment of world-renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals – of Klezmatics fame – and Donald Sosin, the celebrated silent film pianist.
Performing Artists:
Alicia Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman and has worked with such artists as The Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Svigals was awarded a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission for her original score to the 1918 film, The Yellow Ticket, and is a MacDowell Fellow. Svigal’s Fidl from 1996, reawakened interest in the klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest release – Beregovski Suite: Klezmer reimagined – is recorded with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer, and is an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.
Donald Sosin (“the top of the line of film pianists” – Leonard Maltin, critic/author) has performed
his scores for silent films at Lincoln Center, MoMA, the National Gallery, and major
film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Pordenone, Bologna,
Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Stockholm, Vienna, Moscow and Jecheon, South Korea. He
records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone, and Flicker Alley, and his scores are heard
frequently on TCM. Sosin has had commissions from MoMA, the Chicago Symphony Chorus,
the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
This program is supported by a generous grant from the Sunrise Foundation for Education
and the Arts, La Jolla, California.
The Ancient Law tells the tempestuous story of a hero caught between his traditional small-town Yiddish origins and the allure of a modern European city. The striking contrast between traditional Jewish East and Western European settings in this 1920s film is described with loving authenticity, and provides a perfect vehicle for the klezmer-based musical artistry of our performance duo. This promises to be a true cultural fusion event, combining the extraordinary beauty of an original musical score by Svigals and Sosin, with the visual cinematic delights of a German-Jewish silent era classic.
Event is organized and sponsored by Judaic Studies Department with help from co-organisers
and co-sponsors: Music Department, Cinema Department, German & Russian Department,
as well as the College of Jewish Studies.
With special added thanks to the Music Department for their expert support!
More information and updates please contact Maja Dragojlovic.
