The NY Fidl Kapelye, led by Amy Zakar, have performed several times at the NY Klezmer Series, and it’s always a blast! This time with wonderful dance leader, Sarah Myerson!
Jalopy Theater & School of Music
315 Columbia Street Brooklyn, New York 11231 phone 718.395.3214
Klezmer Instrumental Music Workshop 6:30pm-8:00 $25 per class,
Concerts & Dance Parties begin at 8:30pm – $15
Jam Session follows Concert 10-11:00ish
Full night pass – $35 (includes Workshop, Concert & Jam Session)
more info about Jalopy, including how to get there, at www.jalopy.biz
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.
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, a five-woman ensemble. Tsibele released their debut album “It’s Dark Outside/ In Droysn iz Finster” in September 2017. She also performs regularly with klezmer groups Litvakus, Ternovka, Fraydele, and the Honorable Mentschn. A versatile player, she can be seen playing such diverse styles as French-infused reggae with the Blue Dahlia to Mexican folkloric music with the Calpulli Mexican Dance Company. In 2016 she composed and performed music for “Song and Dance You”, a new dance piece about Black Lives Matter and minstrelsy, in collaboration with award-winning choreographer Joya Powell. A selection from the piece was performed at the 2016 Bessie Awards for an audience of over a thousand people.
Eléonore Biezunski is a vocalist and classically trained klezmer violinist who grew up in a Yiddish speaking family in France. She has performed in Europe and the United States with her bands, including the Klezmographers with Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl) and the Shtetl Stompers with Ilan Moss (accordion) and Joanna Sternberg (double bass) in New York. She released an album in 2016 with her band Yerushe under the label of the Institut Européen des Musiques Juives, consisting of Yiddish songs and klezmer music from various folklore collections, including the Ruth Rubin archives held at YIVO. Her band Shpilkes based in Paris, released the album Zol zayn in 2014. She also appears in the New York Fidl Kapelye.
Aaron Alexander curates this series and makes the website and doesn’t want to put his bio here right now.
Amy Zakar, Zoe Aqua, Eleonore Biezunski, Aaron Alexander, Fidls,
Lauren Brody -accordion, Marty Confurius – bass