Person Place Thing with Jonathan Brent
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Discussion
Co-sponsored by Person Place Thing In Person:Admission: $15 Zoom Livestream:Admission: Free |
Join YIVO for a recording of the public radio show, Person Place Thing, with YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent. Hosted by humorist Randy Cohen, Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are especially engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing with particular meaning to them.
The conversation will consist of Brent and Cohen discussing three different objects from the YIVO Archives and Library. YIVO’s collections contain 24 million items and 400,000 books, offering insight into centuries of Jewish history. Brent and Cohen will cover topics such as the Holocaust, American antisemitism during the interwar period, and more. Jardena Gertler-Jaffe and Bethany Pietroniro will play selections of music found in YIVO’s collections throughout the event.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
About the Participants
Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins, 2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, 2008). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for "Late Night With David Letterman" for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s "TV Nation." He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote "The Ethicist," a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.
A performer/scholar, Jardena Gertler-Jaffe is working on a PhD in Vocal Performance at New York University and also earned her M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. She seeks to incorporate her research interests concerning the construction of musical, artistic, and cultural identities in the face of oppression/oppressive systems into her artistic practice. An interpreter of Yiddish art song and Jewish liturgical works, she has worked as a cantorial soloist in synagogues in the United States and Canada and performed at Jewish Music conferences and festivals in Quebec and Ontario. Her scholarly work has appeared in the University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought and Musica Judaica Online. Highlights of her career so far have included performing the Canadian premiere of Alex Weiser’s Pulitzer-nominated set and all the days were purple and making the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Five Songs from Anna Berkowitz, works that also highlight her love of and interest in Yiddish language and culture.
Pianist Bethany Pietroniro is a versatile collaborator whose work spans an eclectic range of vocal and instrumental repertoire. She has performed at venues including Alice Tully Hall, the Morgan Library, and the Baltimore War Memorial, and has participated in the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Bach Institute at Emmanuel Music, SongFest, and the Garth Newel Chamber Music Festival. After completing her Master's degree at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, she was a Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. She frequently joins Bard's resident orchestra, The Orchestra Now, as an orchestral keyboardist for numerous concerts during their 2017-2021 seasons and has been a rehearsal pianist for opera productions at the Bard SummerScape Festival for the past three seasons.