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Ami and Tami An Immersive Musical Fable

March 29, 2024

“Truly conceived for the entire family. A rare breed.” (Carole Hyatt, CBS TV)

Fantastical Forests! Wicked Witches! An… an Imf?

 

Israeli composer Mátti Kovler (Here Comes Messiah, Carnegie Hall) and his music

theatre company Floating Tower team up with director and visual polymath Doug

Fitch (New York Philharmonic’s The Cunning Little Vixen) to present ‘Ami and Tami’ a

sophisticated, immersive musical fairytale for children and families.

Ami and Tami, trapped inside by their overbearing parents, long for adventure in the

outdoors. Fed up with their house and bored of homework, the siblings escape into

the unknown, enchanted forest. Their journey sends them into the clutches of the Evil

Humm, the lair of Yaga the Witch and the depths of their own imagination.

“The singing was splendid and the piece is musically brilliant.”

(Yehudi Wyner, Pulitzer Prize Winner)


The Israeli twist on the familiar tale of Hansel and Gretel, ’Ami and Tami’ in a new

English translation by Spencer Garfield, promises to enthrall audiences of all ages.

Featuring seven versatile actors, who all sing, dance and play musical instruments,

the performance is headlined by the Emmy award winning Television host Sonya

Hamlin as Storyteller and Ami and Tami’s composer Mátti Kovler performing the

actual role of Composer in the production.

With mesmerizing visual design from Doug Fitch and costumes by Tommy Nguyen, the piece unfolds across five spaces across the Blue Building, allowing the audience to

step into a magical new world. Instrument wielding characters lead the audience

through the forest, where they become part of Ami and Tami’s adventure.

“…Striking music. Kovler appears to be contemplating the fork in the road that

divides opera from musical theater. Someone to watch.”

(Steve Landrigan, Boston Musical Intelligencer)

 Join us for a unique opportunity to catch ‘Ami and Tami’ in NYC before it heads to

the Underbelly theater at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. For further

information and press review tickets please contact Erin Simmons.

Email: erin@floatingtower.com Phone: (469) 826 1224

Floating Tower

With a modular make-up of 27 multi-national actors/musicians, Floating Tower

operates as a producer, creator and educator developing innovative content along

new avenues of cross-cultural engagement. Drawing upon the power of music to evoke

emotion, Floating Tower creates music and theatre experiences that transcend

boundaries of language, geography or history. While many Floating Tower events

spring from a Jewish impulse they aim to speak to a universal audience.

Since its founding in 2011, Floating Tower has created over thirty productions in the

United States, Israel, China and Russia. Spanning from traditional to experimental,

Floating Tower events have been staged at venues ranging from Boston’s Museum of

Fine Arts to the Underground Collector, a 1000 sq. ft. art-loft in Moscow.

www.floatingtower.com

 

Mátti Kovler

Described by The New York Times as “a potentially estimable operatic composer in the

making,” Matti is the grandson of the Russian operatic tenor and Yiddish singer Leonid

Kovler. Mátti Kovler’s music has been commissioned by Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall and

the Israel Philharmonic. Born in Moscow, Russia, he was raised in Jerusalem, Israel,

and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a member of the BMI Lehman

Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, the foremost training ground for new musical

theatre, where the writers of A Chorus Line, and The Book of Mormon, among others,

learned their craft.

A pioneer in redefining “Jewish musical theater” in the 21st century, over the past

decade Kovler created a substantial body of work intended to propel this genre

beyond wallowing in a nostalgic past. In 2014 Kovler was the Elie Wiesel composer-inresidence at the Boston University.

Kovler was a recipient of the Chai in the Hub Combined Jewish Philanthropies Young

Leadership Award for his voluntary work with the young Jewish and Israeli

communities in Boston. Over the course of several residencies with various Jewish

organizations in Boston (The New Center for Arts and Culture, Northeastern Hillel,

BU’s Elie Wiesel Center) Matti has developed unique programming focused on

engaging young Jewish people in contemporary Jewish culture outside the political

discourse.

Among the most engaging projects were the Suf-Ga-Ni-Ya (Hebrew for ‘donut’), a viral

music video in response to antisemitic vandalism at Northeastern university, and the

musical installation Seekers of Light (with Iranian and Israeli musicians in the cast)

presented as part of the MFA Hanukkah public-art event, drawing an unprecedented

number of 2300 people to the MFA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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