Who was Essad Bey? – The musical

Part 1: 6.30 p.m. Guided tour of the Villa Seligmann with Dr. Birte Rogacki-Thiemann and Christina Achhammer (Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments) with a focus on monument protection and maintenance
Part 2: 8 pm musical “Who was Essad Bey?” in the garden of Villa Seligmann

The guided tour and concert can be attended individually or together. Please indicate which part(s) of the event you would like to attend when you register.

Admission is open from 6.15 pm.

Admission is free.
Registration at nld-veranstaltungen@ndl.niedersachsen.de is required.
Registration is possible from May 05, 2025.

Daniel Kahn is a singer, musician, actor, director, composer and entertaining storyteller all rolled into one. Born and raised in Detroit, he had the opportunity to find his place between black and white, rich and poor, above and below, inside and outside. After studying theater and music, he lived and worked in New Orleans, Detroit, New York and Ann Arbor and made a name for himself as a bar pianist, at bluegrass jams and punk circus parades, with directing work and as an actor. He also composed the music for a production of Brecht’s “Mann ist Mann”.

Marina Frenk is an actress, speaker, musician and author. She was born in the Republic of Moldova and has lived in Germany since 1993. After studying acting in Essen, she performed at renowned theaters such as Schauspielhaus Bochum, Schauspiel Leipzig, Schauspiel Köln, Schauspiel Frankfurt and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. She has been working as a freelance artist since 2015. She has received several awards for her artistic achievements, including the Bochum Theater Prize and the Vera Doppelfeld Literature Prize for her novel “ewig her und gar nicht wahr”.

Yuriy Gurzhy was born in Ukraine and moved to Berlin at the age of 20. He works as a musician, DJ, producer and author. Together with the writer Wladimir Kaminer, he founded the legendary Russendisko party series. As a singer and guitarist, Gurzhy is part of the Emigrantski Raggamuffin collective RotFront. Launched in 2016, his Berlin party series Born In UA is dedicated to Ukrainian music. Gurzhy also composes music for cinema and theater. In 2014, he founded the trio “The Disorientalists” together with Daniel Kahn and Marina Frenk in the Studio Я of the Gorki Theater Berlin and brought “Who was Essad Bey?” to the stage for the first time. In January 2022, he published his first book “Richard Wagner & die Klezmerband. In search of the new Jewish sound in Germany”.