The Seven Wonders of Klezmer, November 23, 2024 at 8:00pm

 The Old Broadway Synagogue, Center for Traditional Music and Dance, the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center and Yiddish New York present:

THE SEVEN WONDERS OF KLEZMER 

Concert featuring music by Lisa Gutkin (violin), Lauren Brody (accordion) and Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl). Saturday night, November 23, 8PM at the Old Broadway Synagogue (15 Old Broadway between 125th & 126th Streets in Manhattan). Suggested donation: $10

A concert featuring three of the contemporary Yiddish music scene's leading performers - violinist Lisa Gutkin (The Klezmatics), accordionist Lauren Brody and tsimbl (hammered dulcimer) player Pete Rushefsky. This program is presented by the Old Broadway Synagogue in partnership with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance and Yiddish New York.

Biographies of performers:

Lisa Gutkin (violin) - Grammy Award-winning violinist/composer, singer, actor, and composer Lisa Gutkin is best known as a member of the acclaimed Klezmatics, and most recently for her musical score, performance, and music direction in the two time Tony award-winner, Indecent. Lisa has had a storied career that reflects the eclectic nature of her life, passion, and creativity. A cameo performance in Sex and the City, a seat in Sting’s Broadway band forThe Last Ship, a CD of original songs produced by John Lissauer, and scores for two of Pearl Gluck’s films have taken her a long way from her beginnings as back up musician to the Fast Folk songwriters’ collective. Praised for her “hauntingly emotional” vocals by the L.A. Times, she has co-authored songs with Anne Sexton, Maggie Dubris, and Woody Guthrie. A MacDowell and Norton Stevens Fellow, Lisa's song “Gonna Get Through This World”, co-written with Woody Guthrie, was described by Pete Seeger as “a piece of genius”

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, Ira Temple, Lauren Brody, Avi Fox-Rosen 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.

We are grateful for the support of the Atran Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

KLEZMER NIGHT ON OL' BROADWAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022

KLEZMER NIGHT ON OL' BROADWAY

with Bob Cohen, Jake Shulman-Ment & Pete Rushefsky 

Saturday, December 10, 8pm

at the Old Broadway Synagogue

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

Suggested donation: $10

Join us for the new klezmer music series at the Old Broadway Synagogue (15 Old Broadway between 125th & 126th Streets in Manhattan) at 8pm on Saturday night, December 10, 2022. 

We'll be featuring three of the contemporary klezmer scene's leading performers - Bob Cohen (violin) Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl/hammered dulcimer) and Jake Shulman-Ment (violin). For decades, an important milestone for aspiring young klezmorim has been to make a pilgrimage to see Bob Cohen of the ensemble Di Naye Kapelye in Budapest. Or even better, to accompany Cohen on a tour of Transylvanian villages in search of the last Roma musicians who played with Jewish bands before WWII. Two such pilgrim over the years have been violin virtuoso Jake Shulman-Ment, now recognized as one of the contemporary klezmer scene’s finest fiddlers, and tsimbl (cimbalom/hammered dulcimer) player Pete Rushefsky. Join the trio for a night of rediscovered melodies, Hasidic spirtuals and rollicking dance tunes. This program is presented by the Old Broadway Synagogue in partnership with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance and Yiddish New York.

Biograpies of performers:

Bob Cohen (violin) was born in New York in 1956 to a Hungarian mother and Moldavian father. In the late 1980s, he commenced his research on Hungary’s Jewish musical heritage, including songs, dances, and musical instruments. In 1993, he founded the influential Budapest-based ensemble Di Naye Kapelye (The New Band) with accordionist Christina Crowder and bassist Géza Pénzes. The musicians present klezmer music in the style in which it was originally performed in Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. Their 2008 release Traktorist ranked high on Songline World Music Magazine’s “Top of the World” list of best new albums. Cohen served as a consultant, speaker and featured artist at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. He is currently touring as part of the Brothers Nazroff ensemble, which recently released their first album on Smithsonian Folkways; the band is featured in the 2016 documentary by Hungarian filmmaker Csaba Bereczki entitled “Soul Exodus.”

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.

Jake Shulman-Ment (violin) is at the helm of a new generation of Klezmer and Yiddish music performers. He tours and records internationally in addition to being a widely sought-out teacher of the klezmer fiddle tradition at festivals around the globe. He collected, studied, performed, and documented traditional music in Romania as a Fulbright scholar, and has lived and traveled in Hungary and Greece, learning traditional violin styles. In 2018 he received the prestigious NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Folk/Traditional Arts. He was a featured subject of Csaba Bereczki’s full-length documentary film Soul Exodus, and appears on HBO’s Succession, Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, and a host of other film and theater productions. Jake’s debut solo album, A Redele (A Wheel) (Oriente Musik, 2012) was nominated for the German Record Critics’ Award. His new group, Midwood, released its first album, Out of the Narrows, (Chant Records) in May 2018.