Shtoltse Lider, with Ida Gillner and Livet Nord

ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  How was Anna Margolin’s collection of poetry received when it was first published?

Anna Margolin was born Rosa Lebensboim in Lithuania in 1887 and immigrated to New York in 1906, where she joined a circle of Jewish immigrant intellectuals, and became a professional journalist for the Yiddish press. She also wrote short stories but is most well-known for her poetry, which literary critics rank among the finest Yiddish poetry of early twentieth-century America. She is considered a literary modernist with a secular perspective. Her only published book was Lider, in 1929; a few years later she began to suffer from depression and did not allow any more of her works to be published.  Margolin died in New York in 1952.

Ida Gillner is a freelance musician, artist, composer, and performing artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. She created the Shtoltse Lider project in 2015 to highlight and set to music poetry by women who wrote in Yiddish before the Second World War.

Livet Nord is an esteemed freelance musician, producer, project manager, concert organizer and violin pedagogue based in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is basically trained in classical violin, and since 1998 has worked as a freelance musician in a variety of groups, plays and projects within different genres and musical styles.

In 2022, Ida and Livet formed the duo Shtoltse Lider to continue Ida’s project, and in this program we are speaking with them about their first joint album, Queen of Word – A Tribute to Anna Margolin.