Harrisburg, PA – HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, will host the Old World Folk Band in a musical celebration of Hebrew heritage at 11:30 a.m. Monday, Nov. 9, in the Cooper Student Center on the Harrisburg Campus, One HACC Drive. The concert is free and the public is invited.The band’s performance is part of the Central Pennsylvania Libraries’ annual One Book, One Community program featuring “The People of the Book,” Geraldine Brooks’ novel inspired by the creation and existence of Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish prayer book that originated in 15th-century Spain.
The Old World Folk Bank will perform klezmer, a musical genre developed in Southeastern Europe and traditionally played at Jewish weddings and other celebrations, as well as Eastern European folk music representing different periods evoked in “People of the Book.” The band will demonstrate and explain how people in disparate cultures and faiths act both simply and heroically to preserve music and arts over time.
In addition, nationally known calligrapher Susan Leviton will demonstrate the art of Hebrew hand-lettering with special emphasis on the style of the Sarajevo Haggadah.
Based in Harrisburg, the Old World Folk Band performs extensively in the mid-Atlantic region, from upstate New York to Virginia. The band has appeared at The Philadelphia Folk Festival, Longwood Gardens and the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance, all in Pennsylvania; the Clearwater Greater Hudson River Revival in New York; Baltimore Artscape; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; and at numerous universities and public events.
In 1994, the band debuted on national television with a one-hour documentary, “Our Lives are in Our Songs,” a production that included a live concert, interviews and footage from Yiddish film archives.
