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PERFORMANCE GUIDE

Yasmin Levy Performance Guide

Yasmin Levy learned how to play the piano when she was six-years-old.  She grew up accompanying her mother, Kochava, who was a singer, but never considered singing herself until she was twenty-years-old.

 “My flamenco teacher asked me to sing one day, and I told her I can’t, that I’d never sung.  She insisted, I opened my mouth for the first time, and discovered I was a singer.”
From the article “Echoes of forgotten music” by Noam Ben Ze’ev

Yasmin’s father, Isaac Levy, was a leading researcher of Sephardic Jewish culture, and devoted his life to preserving and recording the music of Sephardic Jews. During his lifetime, Isaac published several volumes of secular and sacred Sephardic songs.  He passed away when Yasmin was only one, but his work has been kept alive through her music.

After performing for several years as a local artist, Yasmin made her international debut at the World Music Expo in Essen, Germany in 2002.  She has since toured extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and her National Tour this autumn marks her first tour of the United States. She has recorded four albums, her most recent,“Sentir”, released in October 2009.

Sephardic Jews
Jewish people have been living in Spain since approximately 950 BCE.  During the Middle Ages, Jews were persecuted because they were not Catholic, the official religion of the Spanish Kingdom.  In the year 711, Spain fell under the rule of the Muslim Moors and the Jewish intellectual community flourished.  This period is considered the “Golden Age” for the Spanish Jews.  By the mid-thirteenth century, Christians had re-conquered most of Spain, and Jews were increasingly forced to convert to Catholicism.  Many Jews, however, still practiced Jewish customs in private. 

The Edict of Expulsion
In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued a decree that all Jews living in the Spanish kingdom were either to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country.  Thousands of Jews were exiled from their homes, and in the years that followed, settled in other parts of Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. At this time, the Middle East was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, who welcomed the Jewish people who had been exiled into their lands. Jews were allowed to speak their own languages and practice their religion freely.  Even though they were considered second-class citizens, the Jews lived peacefully there for hundreds of years.

World War II to the Present
Along with other Jewish groups, Sephardic Jews living in Europe suffered heavily from the Holocaust during World War II.  After the State of Israel was established in 1947, tensions developed for Jews living in Muslim countries.  During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of Sephardic Jews fled the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East, and traveled to Israel, where they were placed in transit camps.

The Sephardic community in Israel has been struggling for decades, but Sephardic Jews are increasingly achieving prestige in society.  Sephardic communities have also developed in Central and South America, Zimbabwe, the Belgian Congo, and North America.

Our Education Study Guide, which has information about the performance, including ensemble members and instrumentation >>