Aaron
Alexander is drummer based in NYC. He is leader of Midrash
Mish Mosh and a member of Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars,
Greg Wall's Later Prophets, Alex Kontorovich's Deep Minor, Hasidic
New Wave, Klezmerfest, and has had the privilege of working with
the Klezmatics, Adrienne Cooper, German Goldenshteyn, Marilyn
Lerner, Ray Musiker, Pete Sokolow, and Alicia Svigals.
Merceditas
Mañgo-Alexander has performed with Doug Varone and Dancers,
Pepatian, Elisa Monte Dance Company, Ballet Hispanico of NY, Eliot
Feld, Ballet Philippines, and other independent New York choreographers.
She has also developed a body of original choreography and has
presented solo works with Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church,
Dixon Place, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) and Free Range Arts,
as well as group works for students at The Ailey School, and Rutgers
University's Mason Gross School of the Performing Arts. Presently,
she is on faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. She has also taught
at The Ailey School, Harkness Center for Dance at The 92nd Street
Y, The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Bates Dance Festival, NYU/Tisch
School for the Arts, Marymount Manhattan College, Hunter College,
Rutgers University, Mark Morris Dance Center, Movement Research,
and Dance New Amsterdam. She has a BA in Dance and Anthropology
from Empire State College.
Dan
Blacksberg is one of the few trombonists playing klezmer
music on the east coast. He has performed or recorded in the US
and abroad with Frank London, Michael Winograd, Aaron Alexander,
Susan Watts, Elaine Hoffman Watts, the Klez Dispensers, Hankus
Netsky, Alan Bern, Adrienne Cooper, Alex Kontorovitch and the
Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. These musical associations have brought
Blacksberg to such far-flung locales as Hungary, Poland, Austria,
Germany, Canada and some strange corners of Brooklyn.
Joanne
Borts has had the good fortune to perform with many great
klezmorim, including The Klezmatics, Khevrisa, Frank London's
Klezmer Brass All-Stars and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. She's
appeared on Broadway, off -Broadway and around the world in both
English and Yiddish Theatre. Favorite new project: The Three Yiddish
Divas.
Lauren
Brody is an alumna of the pioneering klezmer revival band
Kapelye, with whom she toured and recorded for over a decade,
and is also a Yiddish singer well known for her unique old-world
sound. Lauren leads a parallel life as a performer of the traditional
music of Bulgaria and the Balkans, and has won a series of grants
to conduct groundbreaking research in Bulgaria on early commercial
folk music recordings.
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Mike
Cohen is a sax, flute and clarinet player living and working
in New York. Mike also leads the klezmer band The Kleztrafobix
who have performed their esoteric form of klezmer recently opening
for a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Israeli Philharmonic
at the Core Center arena in Philadelphia as well as concerts through
out the Northeast. He also leads his own jazz quartet which can
be heard performing around New York City.
Amy
Carrigan has been Associate Administrator at Living Traditions since 2008. She is a theater maker, puppeteer, photographer and singer of music from folk and avant garde improvisational music to classical and jazz. For the past 10 years, Amy has been a core member of the Brooklyn-based puppetry company, Drama of Works, as well as a principal artist in the New York/London-based vocal and movement-based performance group, Experience Vocal Dance Company since 2005. She is the great granddaughter of Armenian Composer, Grikor Mirzaian Suni, and has an innate thirst for traditional music from around the world.
Naomi
Cohen is a soprano and music educator living in NYC. Her
performing credits include opera roles at the Amalfi Coast Music
Festival and the 2005 NYC Fringe Festival world premiere of the
opera A.F.R.A.I.D. She has done extensive concert solo and ensemble
singing in various venues, including Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall
and St. John the Divine. She taught general and choral music at
The Chapin School in NYC for 11 years before becoming the music
director at the SAR Academy in Riverdale, NY this fall. She is
thrilled to be working with the KlezKids again this year.
Adrienne
Cooper is one of this generation's most influential performers
of Yiddish vocal music, appearing on concert, theater, and club
stages, recording, teaching and lecturing on Yiddish music around
the world. In her day job she is Assistant Executive Director
of the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring.
Peggy/Khaye
Davis will lead evening activities for children. She has
taught at KlezKamp for many years and works as a calligrapher
and graphic artist. She also plays flute in the Wholesale Klezmer
Band.
Master
mixer, cratedigger, musical continent-spanner SoCalled (aka Josh
Dolgin) performs and records widely with a crew of mixed-up
freaks and geniuses from around the world, including C Rayz Walz,
Killah Priest, Matisyahu, Fred Wesley, Susan Hoffman-Watts, Frank
London, and Irving Fields. Armed with his Akai MPC, heritage and
love for genre-bending music, SoCalled is a Yiddish rapping, accordion
wielding, Klezmer hip hop maestro.
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Felix
Fibich is KlezKamp's most senior faculty member. His first
memories of Jewish dance came from his early experiences at synagogue
with his father, who was from the chasidic Modzitcher rebbe's
court. At 22, Felix escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto into Russian
territory. In Bialystok, he met up with his own dance teacher
from Warsaw, Judith Berg, whom he married. After moving to the
US, together they brought the world of traditional Yiddish dance
gestures to a new audience. Felix is an accomplished actor and
choreography with many Broadway, movie and television credits.
Benjy
Fox-Rosen is a Brooklyn based bassist, singer, and composer.
He has performed internationally as a member of Luminescent Orchestrii,
a Balkan inspired string band, and is also a founding member of
PLAY! ensemble, a microtonal improvisation group. In 2007 Benjy
was a recipient of the Bronfman Fellowship for Emerging Jewish
Student Artists for "Minutn fun Bitokhn"
his suite composed around four Yiddish songs. Benjy performs regularly
with transylvanian folk band Metrofolk, Jake Shulman-Ment, Michael
Winograd, The Amazing Frozen String Quartet and with his own band,
Minutn fun Bitokhn, focusing on the songs of, and original setting of poems by Mordechai Gebirtig.
Jill
Gellerman has danced, most recently with Frank London and
Friends, and taught dance at many institutions--from Western Illinois
University to Yiddish Summer Weimar. She has lectured and published
on results from an NEH grant documenting hasidic dance and cultural
traditions in Brooklyn. In addition to KlezKamp, Jill is a guest
artist at YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language,
Literature and Culture and at the annual Jewish Culture Festival
in Cracow, Poland.
Sarah
Gordon is a Yiddish singer and lyricist who has performed
with Frank London, The Klezmatics and Mikveh among others. Her
song lyrics have been recorded by Frank London's Klezmer Brass
Allstars, Mikveh, Khevre and The Klezmatics. At 5'2" she
is one of the tallest female poets in the history of Yiddish Literature.
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Klezmer
flutist and multi-instrumentalist Adrianne
Greenbaum teaches through her fusion of historical sensibilities,
dance, theory, old recordings and texts. Focusing on the revival
of the flute in klezmer, she performs and teaches throughout the
US, presenting master classes at universities and flute conferences
and is also on the faculties of Klezkanada and Klezmerquerque.
For
over 30 years bassist Jim Guttmann
has performed in a wide range of venues from smokey dives to Carnegie
Hall. He joined the Klezmer Conservatory Band at its inception
in 1980 and as a member of the band has performed and recorded
with Itzhak Perlman and Joel Grey. In addition to working with
KCB he is currently performing klezmer music with Andy Statman,
Alicia Svigals' Klezmer Fiddle Express.
Josh
Horowitz is the director of Budowitz and co-founder of
Veretski Pass. He performs on Tsimbl (Yiddish Dulcimer), 19th
Century Button Accordion and Piano and has recorded with numerous
ensembles, including the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. He has received
over 40 international awards for his work, including the Prize
of Honor for orchestral composition, presented by the Austrian
government. His books include The Ultimate Klezmer and The Sephardic
Songbook.
Miriam
Isaacs specializes in Yiddish language and researches Jewish
sociolinguistics and Yiddish culture as a tool of identity and
empowerment. She has explored the uses of Yiddish language among
contemporary Hasidim and has recently written on the works of
dramatist Peretz Hirschbein. She has also written on Yiddish culture
in the Displaced Person's camps in postwar Germany. Dr. Isaacs
has been teaching Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland,
College Park, since 1995. Her teaching includes basic Yiddish
language and literature in the original and in translation, as
well as courses on Yiddish theater and film, fantasy and the supernatural
in Jewish literature and on the immigrant experience in Jewish
and other literatures.
Don
Jacobs is in charge of live sound and recording inside
the Tanzhal. You can find out much more about him at his website:
www.inconcertaudio.com.
He is always happy to be a part of the Klezkamp whirligig!
Eve
Jochnowitz is a culinary ethnographer, chef, baker, and
Yiddish instructor at the YIVO institute. She has lectured both
in the United States and abroad on food in Jewish tradition, religion,
and ritual as well as food in Yiddish performance and popular
culture. Ms Jochnowitz is the Chocolate Lady and writes regularly
on her blog, In
Mol Araan.
Faith
Jones is a librarian in Vancouver, Canada. She is part
of a three-person collective that translates the poetic works
of Celia Dropkin into English and serves as Yiddish editor for
Bridges: a Jewish Feminist Journal.
She co-produced KlezKamp's 20th anniversay double-CD release,
"Live From KlezKamp!"
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Tine
Kindermann is a German visual artist and singer who lives
in New York. Her artistic work and recent recordings of old German
folk songs draw inspiration from the darker side of folklore and
deal with the timeless themes of love and loss, longing and loneliness.
Although Tine has been singing for 30 years and worked with artists
such as the Klezmatics, Adrienne Cooper, Joanne Borts, Greg Wall,
Lorin Sklamberg and others, "Schamlos Schön", which features some
of New York’s finest contemporary musicians, is her first solo
recording. Most of the songs on the CD, which were first performed
live in New York in 2001, are classics of German folk music and
were taught to Tine Kindermann by her mother and grandmother.
Tine’s dioramas, which are largely inspired by German fairy tales,
have been shown at NY Studio Gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art,
NYU Galleries, the Toy Theatre Museum, the Manhattan Borough President’s
Office and other places.
Bill
Kornrich is a community cultural consultant, a descriptor
that he dreamed up. He works with a variety of non-profit cultural
organizations in the areas of organizational development, needs
assessment, community partnerships, and long-range planning. He
enjoys stage managing and getting people to work together. He
and his wife, Yvonne, live on a ridge overlooking the Clinch River
in east Tennessee.
Jazz
pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner
performs internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana,
from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. Lerner's work spans
the worlds of jazz, creative improvisation, klezmer, and 20th
century classical music. She composes for film, theatre, radio
and television. Marilyn has just released her 10th recording,
Romanian Fantasy, a solo CD of improvisations on traditional Eastern
European Jewish music.
Curt Leviant
is the author of 27 books, including seven novels, the most recent
of which is the comic A Novel of Klass,
whose hero calls himself a Yiddish painter. Mr. Leviant has also
written the international best-seller, Diary
of an Adulterous Woman, and has translated works by Sholom
Aleichem, Avraham Reisen, and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
A
familiar presence at KlezKamp since 1986,
Susan Leviton brings her depth of knowledge, engaging teaching
style, and infectious enthusiasm to all things Yiddish. She's
an accomplished singer and calligraphic artist who travels as
a performing artist-in-residence, sharing Yiddish culture and
contemporary Jewish arts. Susan works her magic on commissioned
artworks which range from greeting cards and ketubot to large
scale wall art for synagogues, JCC's, and independent living centers.
Whether in song or visual arts, her work is rooted in tradition
and reaches forward to stretch the imagination.
Henia/Henny
Lewin was born in Kovno, Lithuania and is a native Yiddish
speaker. She was the Yiddish Valedictorian at graduation from
the United Jewish Teachers Seminary in Montreal, Canada and attained
a Masters in Education from the University of Vermont, where she
became a Hebrew and Yiddish instructor. In 1997 Henia received
the prestigious Covenant Award as an Outstanding Jewish Educator
in North America. That year she moved to Amherst, MA to be the
Yiddish scholar at the National Yiddish Book Center. She offered
Yiddish classes for adults and taught Yiddish courses at Hampshire
College and at UMASS, Amherst and currently facilitates a Yiddish
study group for adults.
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A
founding member of Kapelye since the band's inception in 1979,
clarinetist Ken Maltz has performed
in hundreds of appearances on stage, television, radio and film
throughout North America and Europe. One of the early pioneers
of the klezmer revival, such diverse sources as The New York Times
and The Berlin Morning Post have spoken of his performances in
the most glowing terms. A veteran staff member, Ken has a devoted
following of students throughout the world.
Sherry
Mayrent came to her first KlezKamp in 1987, an accomplished
clarinetist in styles other than klezmer. Within a few years,
she transitioned from student to apprentice to Staff in 1995 and
in 2001, as the Associate Director of Living Traditions and KlezKamp.
Her KlezKamp experience led to her becoming the clarinetist and
musical director of the Wholesale Klezmer band, the Western Massachusetts
ensemble she joined in 1990. She recently left that group to concentrate
her energies on the Living Traditions Online Sound Archive, of
which she is co-director. She is also a record producer and a
prolific composer of traditional klezmer tunes, and has published
several books of klezmer charts, as well as creating a volume
of traditional klezmer styles for PG Music's auto-accompaniment
program, "Band in a Box." Her passion for traditional
Yiddish culture is equaled only by her passion for traditional
Hawaiian culture.
Dan
Peck has been Operations Director for KlezKamp for the
last 20 years. He is the creator of the EpesCenter. He is an accomplished
old-time musician (banjo and guitar). A member of the Buck Mountain
Band from Grayson County, Virginia, he produced their premier
recording Moon Behind the Hills
in 2007. He is also a published photographer and author of books
on databases and digital photography. He has worked for many years
at traditional music festivals as a performer, photographer, stage
manager and sound man. He is on the advisory board for the Charlie
Poole Music Festival, the board of directors for the National
Banjo Initiative in North Carolina and works at the Festival of
American Fiddle Tunes.
Film composer, flutist and keyboardist Sarah
Plant scores features, documentaries and multi-media museum
installations. She worked on Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated feature
Eat Drink Man Woman and has composed
for PBS, ITVS, Bravo, Canal+ (France), CBC (Canada), Hallmark,
the Center for Asian American Media, and for Spanish, Swiss and
other European TV. Sarah composed a commission for Bill T. Jones
Dance Company and has scored American Museum of Natural History
biodiversity films. She has received awards/grants from ASCAP,
the NEA and the American Music Center. She is former Music Editor
of Sing Out! magazine, and specializes
in music from around the world. www.sarahplantmusic.com
Jenny
Romaine is a founding member of Obie/Bessie winning Great
Small Works theater collective, music director/ring performer
in Circus Amok, and a member of the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater's
Kids and Yiddish Crew. Romaine collaborates with an intergenerational
army of artists committed to keeping new Yiddish theater at the
heart of social life.
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Mark
Rubin was born to musician parents who met on the University
of Arizona marching band and nurtured their son's connection to
Judaism and his eclectic musical tastes. The bass and tuba instructor
at KlezKamp, a radio and television host, and a music producer,
the multi-talented Rubin is also one of the country's most versatile
sidemen, adept at a variety of musical style and traditions. He
is a founding member of the Bad Livers and has toured internationally
with Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars.
Henry
"Hank" Sapoznik is a four-time Grammy nominated
record producer, radio documentarian, author and performer of
traditional Yiddish and American music. He won a 2002 Peabody
award for his 10 week National Public Radio series "The Yiddish
Radio Project" and was nominated for an Emmy for his score
to the documentary film "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg."
He is a producer for Time-Life Music and is currently working
on establishing a National Banjo Museum.
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Cookie
Segelstein plays fiddle with Hank Sapoznik (who finally
served her decent barbecue) and Mark Rubin in The Youngers of
Zion, is founder of the trio Veretski Pass with Joshua Horowitz
and Stu Brotman and plays in Budowitz. With a Master's degree
from the Yale School of Music, Cookie plays with the New Haven
Symphony as assistant principal viola, and generally plays any
kind of music she can to make a living.
Jake
Shulman-Ment is among the premier young performers of klezmer
violin. He has performed and recorded with many of the stars of
the international klezmer scene, as well as with his own groups.
Proficient in a variety of styles, Jake has travelled extensively
in Hungary, Romania, and Greece documenting, recording, and performing
traditional folk, Gypsy, and Jewish music.
Peter
Sokolow has had a career in Jewish music, commercial music,
and traditional jazz that has spanned over fifty years; he has
done more than 10,000 jobs in that time. He has performed with
many famous klezmer and jazz players, toured Europe and the U.S.
several times, orchestrated three Jewish shows and more than thirty
recordings, and appeared in or arranged for several TV "specials"and
documentary films. He is the author or co-author of books on klezmer
and articles about the klezmer scene, and has lectured extensively.
He has taught at KlezKamp since its inception.
Vera
Sokolow's connection to Jewish textile art began with membership
in the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework and flourished after
she crocheted her first yarmulke, designing a keyboard motif for
her husband, Peter. Using a multiplicity of hand and machine techniques
(e.g. quilting, applique and embroidery), she has since produced
challah covers, Purim napkins, more yarmulkes, kittels, shofar
bags, wall hangings and several chuppahs.
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An
internationally acclaimed klezmer violinist and teacher, Deborah
Strauss is a member of the Strauss/Warschauer Duo and was
a long-time member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Chicago
Klezmer Ensemble.
Jeff
Warschauer is internationally renowned as a guitarist,
mandolinist, Yiddish singer and teacher. He is a member of the
Strauss/Warschauer Duo, was a long-time member of the Klezmer
Conservatory Band, and is on the faculty of Columbia University.
Elaine
Hoffman Watts is a third-generation klezmer musician, scion
of the great Philadelphia Hoffman family of klezmorim. The first
woman percussionist to be accepted at Curtis Institute, from which
she graduated in 1954, Watts has performed and taught for more
than forty years, working in symphonies, theaters, and schools.
Despite her skills and family heritage, when she was young Ms.
Watts was seldom given opportunities to perform by klezmer bands,
from the 1940s on: they didn't want to employ a girl, even Jacob
Hoffman's daughter. Ms. Watts began performing klezmer actively
again with her daughter Susan Watts. She is a 2007 recipient of
the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship Award.
Susan
Watts represents the youngest generation of a Klezmer dynasty
that reaches back to the Jewish Ukraine of the 19th century, beginning
with her great grandfather, bandleader Joseph Hoffman. She works
and records with a range of talented musicians including her mother
Elaine Hoffman Watts, Frank London and the Klezmer Brass All-Stars,
Mikveh, anad the KlezDispensers.
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Steve
Weintraub is a teacher, choreographer, and performer specializing
in Jewish dance. He received his training with Alvin Ailey and
Erick Hawkins, and danced for Felix Fibich. He teaches Yiddish
dance workshops internationally, leads dancing at Simchas, and
collaborated on Hopkele, a cd of music especially for dancing
Laura
Wernick is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan's
Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Political Science. She
is currently working on her dissertation on social justice philanthropy
and young donor organizing. More specifically, she is exploring
the role of young people with wealth in social justice movements.
Author
of Born to Kvetch and Just
Say Nu, an overnight sensation at 52, Michael
Wex has been teaching at KlezKamp longer than anyone cares
to remember. Novelist, playwright, lecturer, performer and authority
on language and literature, Wex has been called "a Yiddish
National Treasure" and "the finest translator around."
A
professional actress, voice-over artist and corporate training
consultant for over ten years Marilla Wex
first came to KlezKamp from England in 2000 and seemingly never
left. She is very proud to be a co-director of the Klezkids program
and co-writer of the Klezkids play with her husband Michael. She
was not born to kvetch.
Clarinetist
Michael Winograd is based in Brooklyn,
NY and has taught and performed internationally. He has played
with Frank London, Alicia Svigals, Socalled, Joe Morris, Kenny
Wollesen, and Jenny Romaine to name a few. Michael's favorite
color is purple and he enjoys kreplekh
and green tea on the weekends.
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