74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

DECEMBER 13, 2015 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Photo by Jeff Malet

2 * National Gallery of Art

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

Trio Sefardi

Susan Gaeta, voice, guitar, percussion

Tina Chancey, bowed strings, backup voice, percussion

Howard Bass, lute, guitar, percussion

Five Celebrations

1. Judaism

La Bendision de la Madre (Melody, Flory Jagoda)

Cuando el Rey Nimrod

Mizmor /'David (Istanbul)

Boka del Dio (Arrangement, Flory Jagoda)

2. Love and Courtship

Dieziocho Anyos (Arrangement, Flory Jagoda)

Yo t'Admiro (Jack Mayesh)

Morenika Sos (Balkans)

Los Kaminos de Sirkedji (Istanbul)

Yo Hanino, Tu Hanina (Melody, Arrangement, Flory Jagoda)

3. Marriage

Scalerica de Oro

Mi Suegra, la Negra

Oildo Mi Novia (Arrangement, Flory Jagoda)

4. Food and Drink

La Vida Do por el Raki

Mi Vino tan Querido

Siete Modos de Guisar Berenjenas

5. Hanuka

Hanuka, Hanuka (Flory Jagoda)

Las Tiyas (Flory Jagoda)

Ocho Kandelikas (Flory Jagoda)

74th Season • 3
The Musicians

Founded in January 2010, Trio Sefardi is a confluence of three performers who share a love

of, and wide-ranging experience with Sephardic music, playing with La Rondinella, the

Western Wind, and National Heritage Fellowship honoree Flory Jagoda. The Washington

Post's chief music critic Ann Midgette praised the group's "lovely and luminous performance 

of Sephardic songs" and vocalist Susan Gaeta's voice as "compelling," in a review of a recent 

performance at the Kennedy Center with the Post-Classical Ensemble.

Group members combine a respect for tradition with a creative approach to arranging and scoring that is dedicated to bringing the vibrant past into the living present. Trio

Sefardi's first public performance was at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage in November 2010. Since then the group has performed at the Washington Folk Festival, the Takoma

Park Folk Festival, the residence of the Spanish ambassador, and many other local venues.

In December 2011, they were featured performers in the Washington Revels production,

Andalusian Treasures, at Lisner Auditorium.

Members of the trio pursue a variety of musical interests beyond Sephardic music.

Susan Gaeta, who has worked closely with Flory Jagoda for many years, sings with a jazz

ensemble and teaches science at the Nysmith School. Tina Chancey is the founder and

director of HESPERUS, known for its pioneering crossover programs and innovative scoring

for silent films. Howard Bass has performed programs of Renaissance lute songs and solos

for many years with mezzo-soprano Barbara Hollinshead, and also performs regularly with

Flory Jagoda. Chancey and Bass have both performed with the National Gallery Chamber

Players and in other combinations. The trio's first recording, Sefardic Celebration, was released

in 2011.

4 • National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

The Sephardim are descendants of the Jews who lived in Spain prior to the expulsion

mandated by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. Their infamous edict was issued at the time

of the final victory over the Moors at Granada. The Moors, Muslims from North Africa,

had occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula since the eighth century, and Jews had lived

peacefully and productively on the Iberian Peninsula since Roman times. Jews who refused

to convert to Catholicism were forced to leave Spain. Many crossed the border into

Portugal, only to be expelled in 1497. Over time the Jews of Spain dispersed to the north

(the Netherlands and England), to the south (North Africa, especially Morocco and

Tunisia), and to the greater Mediterranean region (southern France, Italy, Greece, and

especially Turkey, and thence to the Balkans). It is believed that some Spanish Jews were 

among the first European colonists to the New World.

The exiled people could take only what they could carry with them. One thing

they carried was their language and oral culture. In exile, many continued to speak

Spanish, or Judeo-Spanish, which is now commonly called Ladino (from ladinar, a word

that means to translate sacred Hebrew texts into Spanish). The term Sephardim comes 

from a reference in the book of the Prophet Obadiah: "The exiles from Jerusalem who

are in Sepharad will possess the towns of the Negev." It is a term that became common

only following the expulsion.

The song tradition was carried and transmitted mainly by women, a tradition that

goes back more than five centuries. Andres Bernaldez, a Spanish monk who witnessed the 

expulsion, wrote the following account: "They were abandoning the land where they were 

born. Small and large, young and old, on foot, atop mules or dragged by wagons, each one

followed his own route toward the chosen port of departure. They stopped by the side of

the road, some collapsing from exhaustion, others sick, others dying. There was not a person

alive who could not have pity for these unfortunate people. Everywhere along the road they

were begged to receive baptism, but their rabbis told them to refuse, while urging the women

to sing and play tambourines to keep their spirits up."

While some Sephardic songs can be reliably traced back to Spain, many new songs

have been composed over the centuries. Like folksongs everywhere, the Sephardim sing of 

love, loss, daily life, holidays, family, and, sometimes, historical events. Songs were sung

mainly in the home, though in the early twentieth century choirs from the Balkans were 

formed and sang some songs at public events. Today, while there are still Sephardic people 

living in Turkey, Israel, the United States, and some South American countries, most European

Sephardic communities were destroyed in the Holocaust, and Ladino is a dying language.

Today's program draws from older traditional songs as well as from repertoire

composed in traditional form in the twentieth century. In almost every instance with the

older songs, the composers' names are long forgotten. In the late nineteenth and early 

twentieth centuries ethnomusicologists and folklorists saved hundreds of Sephardic songs

from oblivion. All too often, however, these scribes neglected to include complete documentation when their work was published; some collections include a city or country where

the songs were collected, but some provide no clues. Collectors working in the post-World

War II era tended to be more careful, but much was lost. What is clear, though, is that favorite

74th Season • 5
songs were sung in Sephardic communities throughout the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East,

and North Africa. Variations in melody and text are common, and it is likely that singers

would invent their own melodies for older texts, or use older melodies for new words.

We include in this program a few songs by Flory Jagoda, the esteemed Bosnian

Sephardic singer and composer who has lived in the Washington area for more than six

decades. Jagoda's songs tell of family life, celebrations, holidays, love, longing, and loss,

and many have become standard in Sephardic singers' repertoires. A few, like her Hanukkah

song, "Ocho Kandelikas," are often thought to be songs from long ago, rather than by a

living composer, showing Jagoda's firm roots in tradition. It is, in fact, almost impossible to

find "old” Hanukkah songs, since the holiday was considered to be a very minor one in the

Jewish calendar. To Jagoda's two Hanukkah songs, we add "Las Tiyas," which she wrote

about how her family celebrated the holidays (including Hanukkah) at the homes of her

many aunts.

Since food and drink are always part of Hanukkah, we have added songs from other

traditional sources to recognize the joy of sharing meals at important, celebratory moments.

The other songs on the program, some of which are performed as instrumentals, are songs

of courtship, lost love, and story-songs, which the Sephardim refer to as romanzas, otherwise known as ballads.

6 • National Gallery of Art

The Seventy-Fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and

F. Lammot Belin Upcoming Concerts

Marriotts Ridge High School Madrigals

Community Caroling

December 19, Saturday, 1:30 and 2:30 

West Building Rotunda

Central Bucks West High School Choir

Community Caroling

December 20, Sunday, 1:30 and 2:30 

West Building, West Garden Court

Eric Mintel Quartet featuring

A Charlie Brown Christmas

50th Anniversary Concert

Central Bucks West High School Choir

December 20, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2015 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover Marc Chagall, Greeting Card for 1972

(detail), 1971, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gerhard E. Pinkus

Back cover West Building, East Garden

Court, Photo by Rob Shelley, National Gallery

of Art, Washington