MUSIC & DANCE OF THE JEWISH TRADITION: SONGS OF LOVE & LONGING AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD
Walter Zev Feldman, Artistic Director
92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue @ 92nd Street

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2006 AT 8PM, TICKETS $30
THE YIDDISH VOICE OF LOVE: SONGS OF BEYLE SCHAECHTER-GOTTESMAN
Michael Alpert, artistic consultant
Yiddish music performed by
Michael Alpert: vocals, drums, violin
Sharon Bernstein: vocals
Adrienne Cooper: vocals
Rebecca Kaplan: vocals
Janet Leuchter: vocals
Miryem-Khaye Seigal: vocals
Paula Teitelbaum: vocals
Deborah Strauss: violin
Marilyn Lerner: piano
Peter Rushefsky: cimbalom

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2006 AT 8PM, TICKETS $30
MEMORIES OF SPAIN
Ladino music performed by the Spanish ensemble ARBOLERAS
Susana Weich-Shahak, artistic consultant
Eliseo Parra García: vocals, oud, saz, percussion
José Manuel Fraile Gil: vocals, percussion
Carmen Terrón Rodas: vocals
Francisco Ortega: violin
Susana Weich-Shahak: kanun, percussion

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2007 AT 8PM, TICKETS $30
WOMEN OF THE EAST: KOL OUD TOF ? PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER
Music of Israel and the Middle East featuring:
KOL OUD TOF TRIO (from Israel), Esti Kenan Ofri, artistic director
ESTI KENAN OFRI: vocalist/dancer
ARMAND SABACH: oud
OREN FRIED: percussion
Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Hebrew songs
Basya Schechter's New York-based ensemble PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER
Hebrew music blending Sephardic, Arabic, East African, Turkish, and Yiddish musical idioms.


Tickets are $30 per concert, or $75 for the entire three-concert series, and may be purchased by calling 212.415.5500, visiting www.92Y.org/concerts, or at the box office. The 92nd Street Y is located at 1395 Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street. By Subway: Take the Lexington Avenue 4, 5 or 6 train to 86th Street -- the Y is located five blocks north on Lexington Ave. The 6 train also stops at 96th Street -- the Y is located four blocks south on Lexington Ave. The M1, M2, M3, M4 and X90 buses run north on Madison Avenue. From the West Side, take the M86 or M96 across to Lexington Avenue.

The 92nd Street Y's acclaimed world music and dance series, Music and Dance of the Jewish Tradition, enters its third year with a three concerts highlighting Songs of Love and Longing Around the Jewish World. Curated by Artistic Director Walter Zev Feldman, the programs explores the expressive culture of Jewishness through music of love from the rich and varied Jewish cultures of Eastern Europe, Spain, and the Middle East.
"While Judaism as a religion is transmitted primarily by men on the basis of texts in Hebrew and Aramaic," says Feldman, "Jewishness (for which the word "Yidishkayt" exists in Yiddish) was a more inclusive concept and allowed a much larger role for women. Jewish women were the principle creators and preservers of folk songs in the Jewish vernacular languages, such as Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic. For this reason all of the musical genres in this season's concerts are female, even where some of the performers are male, and all of the songwriters--Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman (Yiddish), Basya Shechter (Hebrew and English), and Esti Kenan (Hebrew)--are women."
The first concert, on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 8 PM, is The Yiddish Voice of Love: Songs of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman. Featuring the work of teacher, songwriter, and one of America's premier Yiddish Poets, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, the evening celebrates this inspirational woman's incredible legacy. A recipient of the National Heritage Fellowship (awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts), Schaechter-Gottesman has been a driving force for generations of Yiddish singers, including those who have performed her songs as part of the Klezmer revival of the last two decades. The performance features an ensemble of Yiddish musicians and vocalists: Michael Alpert (vocals, drums, violin), Sharon Bernstein, Adrienne Cooper, Rebecca Kaplan, Janet Leuchter, Miryem-Khaye Seigal, and Paula Teitelbaum (vocals), Deborah Strauss (violin), Marilyn Lerner (piano), and Peter Rushefsky (cimbalom).
The series' second concert, Memories of Spain, takes place on Wednesday, November 29 at 8 PM. The evening is an authentic perspective on Ladino folk songs performed by the Spanish ensemble Arboleras. With roots dating back to the Sephardic Jewish communities of fifteenth-century, Ladino (a corruption of the word "Latin") is a blend of Spanish and Hebrew language and culture that, after the Sephardic communities were forced to resettle after the Inquisition, grew to include Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and Italian influences. The members of Arboleras are longtime students of Spanish folklore and work with Susana Weich-Shahak, the leading researcher of Ladino song in Israel. The ensemble Arboleras comprises Eliseo Parra García: vocals, oud (Arabic lute), saz (Middle Eastern fretted lute), and percussion; José Manuel Fraile Gil: vocals and percussion; Carmen Terrón Rodas: vocals; Francisco Ortega: violin; and Susana Weich-Shahak: kanun (Arabic zither) and percussion.
The final installment in the Songs of Love and Longing series takes place on Wednesday, January 17 at 8 PM. The evening, titled Women of the East, features music from Israel and the Middle East performed by two ensembles, Israel's Kol Oud Tof Trio and New York's Pharaoh's Daughter. The first half of the concert features the Kol Oud Tof Trio, with Esti Kenan Ofri (vocalist/dancer), Armand Sabach (oud), and Oren Fried (percussion), as it interprets Ladino, Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew songs in a style that is true to the tradition, yet personally meaningful for the performers. The second half features Basya Schechter's New York-based ensemble Pharaoh's Daughter, which performs songs by Schechter that blend Sephardic, Arabic, East African, Turkish, and Yiddish musical idioms. Several of the works Pharaoh's Daughter will play have been composed especially for this concert.


WALTER ZEV FELDMAN
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music, and a performer on the klezmer dulcimer, cimbal (tsimbl) and on the Ottoman lute tanbur. During the mid-1970s he and Andy Statman studied with the legendary Dave Tarras and were two of the creators of the klezmer revival. Today he performs on the cimbal with his group "Khevrisa" at international festivals and concerts. Feldman is also a teacher and performer of Ashkenazic dance, leading workshops in the U.S., Canada, England, Germany and Israel. As a tanbur-player he recently performed with the Israeli singer Nurit Henig for the President of Turkey on his state visit to Israel (June 2006). His book, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition, and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire was published in Berlin in 1996 and is currently being translated into Turkish. Feldman is a part-time associate professor at Bar-Ilan University in Tel-Aviv and a fellow of the Center for Jewish Music Research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 2004 he co-directed the UNESCO application of the Mevlevi Dervishes of Turkey as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

BEYLE SCHAECHTER GOTTESMAN
TEACHER, POET, SONGWRITER
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman was born in Vienna, Austria, but was raised in pre-war Romania, one of the centers of Yiddish intellectual culture. She survived the Holocaust in the ghetto in Czernowitz and came to the United States in 1951. Active as a teacher and songwriter, she began to write poetry and gained a reputation as one of America's premier Yiddish poets. Many of her songs cover a wide range of subjects from subway musicians, to personal reminiscences, to descriptions of street life in her hometown, the Bronx. The renaissance of klezmer music in the United States allowed her large repertoire of traditional and original material to be performed by many artists. Schaechter-Gottesman has been acclaimed as one of the great living unaccompanied ballad singers. She takes great pride in her work with children, writing songs especially for them and performing frequently for young audiences. In 1998, she was inducted into the People's Hall of Fame by the organization City Lore based in New York City. In 2005 she received a National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship, one of the highest cultural honors given by a United States government agency.

ARBOLERAS
Arboleras was founded in 1994 by Dr. Susana Weich-Shahak, who has spent over 30 years researching Judeo-Spanish music in Israel and throughout the Mediterranean area, while affiliated with the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Joined by singer, instrumentalist, and percussionist Eliseo Parra García; folklorist and singer José Manuel Fraile Gil; singer Carmen Terrón Rodas; and violinist Francisco Ortega, Arboleras offers various programs representing the rich culture from both areas of the Sephardic Diaspora: the communities from the Ottoman- Balkan area and Northern Morocco. The repertoire includes three genres, Romancero, Cancionero and Sephardi Coplas, as well as the newer works of the twentieth century. The ensemble is currently working on its fourth recording, dedicated to the music of the Sephardim from the Island of Rhodes.

KOL OUD TOF TRIO
The name of this group means "voice, oud, drum," and that is what comprises this Israeli ensemble. Esti Kenan-Ofri is an Italian-born, classically trained soprano; Armand Sabach is a Moroccan-born oud player who specializes in classical Arabic music; percussionist Oren Fried is an Israeli native with an extensive background in jazz. The result is a seamless and engaging collaboration that combines Hebrew liturgical poetry, Ladino and Arabic classical modes in a beautiful blend.

PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER
Blending a psychedelic sensibility and a pan-Mediterranean sensuality, Basya Schechter leads her band, Pharaoh's Daughter, through swirling Hasidic chants, Mizrachi, and Sephardic folk-rock, with spiritual stylings filtered through percussion, flute, strings and electronica. Featuring musicians Daphna Mor (winds), Meg Okura (violin), Yuval Lion (percussion), Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (acoustic/electric bass and oud), Noah Hoffeld (cello), Daniel Freedman (percussion), Jason Linder (piano), and Mauro Refosco and Mathias Kunzli (percussion), Pharaoh's Daughter has recorded four albums and also appears on three Tzadik label compilations. The group has toured extensively through America, Eastern and Western Europe, as well as Greece and the UK, and has appeared at Central Park's Summer Stage, Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park, and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

ABOUT THE 92ND STREET Y
Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural, educational and community center serving people of all races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y's mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit each year--both in person and through Live from NY's 92nd Street YTM, the Y's satellite broadcast program. The organization's East Side headquarters (1395 Lexington Avenue) and West Side outpost, the Steinhardt Building (35 West 67th Street), home of the Makor® and Daytime@(TM) programs, offer comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, the arts, personal development and Jewish culture; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, the 92nd Street Y awards over $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches out to 7,000 public school children through fully-subsidized arts education programs. For more information, please visit http://www.92Y.org/.
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For additional information please contact Kirshbaum Demler & Associates at 212.222.4843.