Chag Urim Sameach!

Please join us for a

Freylikhn Chanukah Simchah

at the

Old Broadway Synagogue

With latkes, sufganiyos and the rocking music of...

Lauren Brody (accordion) & 

Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl/hammered dulcimer)

Saturday, December 9, 7:30pm

at the Old Broadway Synagogue

(15 Old Broadway between 125th & 126th Streets in Manhattan)

Free Admission

Sponsored by the Old Broadway Synagogue, State Senator Cordell Cleare and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance

 and Yiddish New York

Join us for a hopping Hanukkah Party at the Old Broadway Synagogue. There will be food, good cheer, not-so-competitive dreydl-spinning, great music and wonderful people sharing the holiday spirit. Music will be provided by klezmer revival pioneer Lauren Brody (accordion) and tsimbl (cimbalom/ hammered dulcimer) player Pete Rushefsky.

Biographies of performers:

Lauren Brody (accordion) is an accordionist, singer, researcher, professional piano tuner/technician and Fulbright scholar from New York City. She is a pioneer of the klezmer music revival in the United States and a founding member of the groundbreaking band “Kapelye”, formed in 1979. She has toured, recorded and appeared on TV and film with Kapelye, and with the seminal all-female ensemble “Mikveh”. Lauren has played the with The Klezmatics, Andy Statman, Michael Winograd, David Krakauer, Alicia Svigals, Frank London, Merlin and Polina Shepherd and many other klezmer luminaries. She was a trailblazer in the domestic Balkan music scene and was the first female gadulka player in the United States. Lauren was an original member of the first Bulgarian traditional folk orchestra “Pitu Guli”, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1970 and has taught and performed at EEFC’s Balkan Camp, Klezkamp, KlezCalifornia, KlezKanada, Ashkenaz, Yidstock, Yiddish New York. Lauren was the recipient of a Bulgarian Government stipend to study Bulgarian folk music during the Communist period, from 1971-73, at the Bulgarian Conservatory of Music in Sofia. As a Fulbright scholar to Bulgaria in 1990 she conducted research on the commercial recording industry and folk music, and released two acclaimed reissues of 78 rpm recordings. Lauren continues to perform, with a particular accent on composing new music for her own Balkan/Klezmer-inspired solo project “Lauren Brody’s Accordion Bytes”, as “Tsoyber” with Yiddish singer Susan Leviton, and with the Bulgaria-based accordion duo Brody-Stoikov.

Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl) A leading performer, composer and researcher of the Jewish tsimbl (cimbalom or hammered dulcimer), Rushefsky tours and records internationally with violinist Itzhak Perlman as part of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and collaborates with a number of leading figures in the contemporary klezmer scene including Andy Statman, Adrianne Greenbaum, Steven Greenman, Joel Rubin, Eleonore Biezunski, Michael Alpert, Madeline Solomon, Zhenya Lopatnik, Zoe Aqua, Jake Shulman-Ment, Keryn Kleiman, Eleonore Weill, Alex Parke, and Michael Winograd. Since 2006 he has served as Executive Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to the preservation and presentation of diverse immigrant music traditions from around the world. He is a founder of the annual Yiddish New York festival, curated the Yiddish program at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival and has authored a number of articles on traditional music and culture.