Mar. 14, 2019 Zoe Aqua, Pete Rushefsky & BCM Klezmer Ensemble

Zoë Aqua is a violinist based in Brooklyn, NY.     From February to August of 2017, she served as the full-time understudy for the Klezmatics’ Lisa Gutkin in the Broadway production of “Indecent”, ultimately going onstage over 18 times. “Indecent” is a Tony-winning play by esteemed playwright Paula Vogel about the creation of the Yiddish play “The God of Vengeance”.

 Quickly becoming an in-demand violinist in the klezmer scene, Zoë is a co-founder of Tsibele and Farnakht, and performs regularly with Litvakus, Ternovka, the Honorable Mentschn, and more. Tsibele’s debut album “It’s Dark Outside/ In Droysn iz Finster” was released in 2017 and features dark and atmospheric original arrangements of Yiddish songs. Farnakht’s debut album “Ultraviolet” was released in 2018 and combines new compositions with klezmer, Romanian, Serbian and Hungarian folk music. In the summer of 2018, she performed at Yiddish Summer Weimar with Farnakht and studied Hungarian folk music in Hungary and Transylvania.

Zoë is a frequent collaborator of Bessie Award-winning choreographer Joya Powell, having composed and performed music for three different pieces: Song and Dance You (2016), (For) Those We Left Behind (2017), and A Life of Many Seasons (2018). Other recent projects have included a piece for dance collective Konverjdans, and playing on Canadian singer Ben Caplan’s most recent album “Old Stock”. Upcoming projects include composing music for a new devised theater piece led by director Coral Cohen and in collaboration with 6 esteemed Jewish women performers, which will premiere in January 2019.

 

Pete Rushefsky is 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. Since 2006 he has served as Executive Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (ctmd.org), the nation’s leading organization dedicated to the preservation and presentation of diverse immigrant music traditions from around the world, and is on the Organizing Committee of Yiddish New York (yiddishnewyork.com). He curated the Yiddish program at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and has performed on PBS, NPR, and France’s Radio One. Despite being featured at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, he’d probably rather be jamming with you in some private room late at night.

 

Brooklyn Conservatory of Music has a Klezmer Ensemble who will be performing an opening set of wonderful traditional Klezmer Music, led by Zoe Aqua! more info tba

 

Klezmer Instrumental Music Workshop 6:30pm-8:00   $25 per class, 
Concerts & Dance Parties begin at 8:30pm – $15
Jam Session follows Concert 9:45-10:45ish 
Full night pass – $35 (includes Workshop, Concert & Jam Session)

All events will take place at The Town & Village Synagogue, Social Hall,  334 East 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.)