"Yellow Ticket" with Alicia Svigals

The Yellow Ticket is a 1918 silent film starring legendary actress Pola Negri, made in Europe before Negri emigrated to Hollywood. The film tells the story of a young Jewish woman from a Polish shtetl who, due to anti-Semitic laws, is constrained to lead a double life in a brothel while attending medical school in Tsarist Russia. The film is surprising in its themes and includes rare footage of the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.

Violinist/composer Alicia Svigals has composed a new live score for the film, which she will perform at the screening along with Canadian jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner and clarinetist Laura DeLuca of the Seattle Symphony. Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer violinist and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, which she co-directed for seventeen years.  Jazz pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner performs to acclaim internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana, from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. Her musical career has been marked by a deep exploration of traditional and free jazz, new music tinged improvisation, and Ashkenazic folk music. Laura DeLuca has been with the Seattle Symphony for thirty years and has had the opportunity to perform in historic concert halls in Europe, Russia, China and South America.