Apr.6,2017 NY Fidl Kapelye, Concert & Tantshoyz w/Sarah Myerson feat. Amy Zakar, Deb Strauss

AmyZakarFidlKapelye

 

Sarah Myerson

 

This will be an encore performance of the New York Fidl Kapelye, a project spearheaded by the renowned violinist and co-founder of the Klez Dispensers, Amy Zakar, and featuring some of the top Klezmer Fidl players in the world, including Deborah Strauss, Jake Shulman-Ment, Keryn Kleiman, along with accordionist extraordinaire, Lauren Brody and more.

The wonderful Sarah Myerson will again lead a Tantshoyz (Yiddish Dance Party) after a short Fidl Kapelye set, and it will surely be a major mechaya.  Don’t Miss It!

Sarah Myerson is a cantor actively working to bridge the worlds of Yiddish culture and Jewish religion. Her love of klezmer music and background in folk dance has drawn her to study Yiddish dance intensively at festivals and workshops. She has led Yiddish social dancing for simkhes, tantshayzer (dance parties), concerts and at festivals, and has taught workshops since 2008 in Europe, Israel, Canada, the USA and Australia. Yiddish dancing is great fun, especially with fabulous live musicians! We’ll work, as dancers, on listening to the music and expressing what we hear through our bodies, and hopefully our dancing will inspire the musicians as well. Symbiotic creation, art forms influences each other.

To deepen her connection with Ashkenazi culture, Sarah has studied Yiddish language at the Uriel Weinreich Program at YIVO, New York, the Beit Ben Yehuda Winter Intensive Program in Jerusalem and the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Summer Program in Tel Aviv.        Sarah received her Bachelor of Music in Composition (Honors) from the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, Australia. She continues to write and perform new Yiddish and sacred Jewish music, accompanying herself on banjolele, piano, accordion or percussion.

Amy Zakar, violin, co-founded the Klez Dispensers, one of New Jersey’s most prolific klezmer bands since 2002, and has been an active and committed klezmer musician and educator for many years. She has been on faculty and Klez Kanada and Klez Camp and maintains an active teaching schedule from her home base in Princeton, NJ.  She has led the NY Fidl Kapelye since 2015.

Deborah Strauss is one of the leading klezmer fiddlers of her generation. She is
also an award-winning children’s educator and a highly regarded Yiddish dancer
and dance leader. She is a member of the inter-continental group Voices of
Ashkenaz with Michael Alpert, Sveta Kundish and Andreas Schmitges, and the
groundbreaking Yiddish/North German fiddle trio, Figelin. She has performed
with the Grammy-winning Klezmatics and appears in the film, Theodore Bikel: In
the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem.

Born in New York City, Jake Shulman-Ment is among the most highly regarded klezmer musicians performing today. He tours and records internationally as a soloist, and with Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, Di Naye Kapelye, The Brothers Nazaroff, Pete Rushefsky, Frank London, Sanda Weigl, Joey Weisenberg, Adrian Receanu, Duncan Sheik, and many more.    Jake first began playing violin at the age of 3, and went on to study classical technique with renowned violin pedagogues Gerald Beal and Joey Corpus. Beginning studies in klezmer from age 12, he was initially a protégé of Alicia Svigals. Jake later immersed himself in related violin traditions, living in Greece, Hungary, and Romania for extended periods, becoming fluent in both the musical and spoken languages. In 2010-2011 Jake was a Fulbright Scholar based in the Eastern Romanian province of Moldavia, where he was surely the first foreigner to become a member of the famous folk orchestra “Rapsozii Botosanilor,” apprenticing himself to the orchestra’s director and master lautar violinist, Ciprian Potoroaca.     Working with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, Jake founded the Tantshoyz (dance house) program. Modeled after the Hungarian táncház movement, the Tantshoyz works to revitalize the Yiddish dance tradition and the spontaneously synergetic connection between dancers and musicians. Tantshoyz has since been replicated in a number of cities in North America and Europe. Jake has been a faculty member of the Henry Street Settlement, KlezKamp, KlezKanada, Klezmer Paris, the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, Yiddish Summer Weimar, and other festivals throughout the globe. His debut solo CD, “A Redele (A Wheel)” (Oriente Musik, 2012) was nominated for the German Record Critics’ Award.

Keryn Kleiman is a New York-based violinist specializing in Jewish and Eastern European folk styles. She is a member of a number of klezmer groups, including Kadya’s Project, Bivolita, and the New York Fidl Kepelye. Keryn graduated with a degree in ethnomusicology from Columbia University-Barnard College, where she was the student-leader of the Columbia Klezmer Band. While in college, Keryn was awarded a grant to research Jewish music and its relationship to co-territorial repertoires in Moldova. She has performed classical and folk music internationally at various music festivals and recently taught as a fellow at Klezkanada. Keryn spent five years studying with Vladimir Zyskind at Manhattan School of Music, where she was the Preparatory Division Concerto Competition Winner at 17 years old.

Lauren Brody, a founding member of both Kapelye and Mikve, is one of the world’s foremost experts in traditional Bulgarian music, and her singing and accordion-playing in Yiddish performances is legendary. She travels the world as a bearer of Yiddish musical tradition.