Zamlers Trio — In Concert — Sunday, Jan. 14, 3pm, Bethany, CT
Join us for a special live studio recording of chamber klezmer music with the Zamlers Trio. This will be a unique opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes in a recording studio, and to participate in the magic of being part of a “live studio audience” without leaving the borders of New Haven County!
Seating is limited so please reserve a seat at Eventbrite. Tickets are by suggested donation $18-36, no one turned away for lack of funds.
About the Concert: Reimagining the Lost Klezmer Music of Ukraine
A chance encounter in Tokyo a few years ago led to the sharing of a unique corpus of musical manuscripts from the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine previously unavailable to klezmer musicians and scholars. This concert will showcase some of the instrumental and vocal music in the corpus. We’ll explore S. An-ski’s radical vision that the folklore of the Jewish people is an oral Torah as important as the Talmud of the sages. This vision inspired the An-ski ethnographic expeditions of 1912-1914, and are the backdrop for An-ski’s most famous work, The Dybbuk. An-ski hoped that the Jewish people would become Zamlers (collectors) who would continue to engage with Ashkenazic folklore as a living, breathing legacy. We invite you to join our “community expedition” into this extraordinary discovery!
Read more about the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project here.
Raffi Boden — Cello
Raffi Boden is a NY-based cellist, composer, improviser and educator known for his versatility and innovation in a variety of genres. Equally at home in classical and klezmer, Raffi holds a Masters from the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Krosnick and a frequent performer with the Axiom ensemble. He holds a BM in music and BA in French from Oberlin College & Conservatory, where he was the winner of the 2018 Concerto Competition, served as Principal Cellist of the Oberlin Orchestra in their 2019 Carnegie Hall performance, and premiered several works with the Contemporary Ensemble. Raffi has won fellowships to study at the Kneisel Hall and Aspen festivals and in 2023 was a featured performer at the Caroga Lake Arts Festival.
In the klezmer world, Raffi is a member of the band Mamaliga, with whom he’s performed internationally as faculty at Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKanada and Yiddish New York. Their debut album of original klezmer compositions, Dos Gildn Bletl, was released in 2021 and hailed as “virtuosic and vibrant.” He is also a member of the six-piece chamber-jazz ensemble Simone Baron & Arco Belo, with whom he’s performed at the Kennedy Center and the Jazz Gallery.
Christina Crowder — Accordion
Christina has been performing and researching Jewish music for thirty years, beginning in Budapest, Hungary in 1993 as a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye, and continuing with a Fulbright grant to Romania to document Jewish music in 1999, and since 2002 with an active research, teaching, and performing career in the US. She is Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute, which has been awarded three NEH Grants for Institute projects (2021-2025). Current projects include compilation of a folio of Jewish-adjacent Moldavian music, and publication of selected field recordings from the Fulbright grant period. Christina lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and performs with her klezmer quartet Bivolița. She also performs regularly with Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentschen, the Dave Levitt Klezmer Trio and many others. She has been a guest instructor in klezmer accordion and ensemble performance in the US, Canada, and Europe, and was both musical director and performer in the 2019 Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the 2020 ART Portland productions of the Broadway play “Indecent.” With the Klezmer Institute, Christina edited the Levitt Legacy music folio, and has led KMDMP artist residency programs in Connecticut, western Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, France, and Belgium.
Keryn Kleiman — Violin
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 Bivolita, the New York Fidl Kepelye, and Kadya’s Project and has performed classical and folk music internationally and nationally. Notable recent engagements include playing with renowned klezmer musicians at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has taught at Klezkanada and Yiddish New York. Keryn graduated with a degree in ethnomusicology from Columbia University-Barnard College, where she was the student-leader of the Columbia Klezmer Band. She was awarded a grant to research Jewish music and its relationship to co-territorial repertoires in Moldova. Since then, she has focused on Bessarabian and Romanian styles, studying in Moldova and Romania. Keryn attended the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a Preparatory Division Concerto Competition Winner. She also recently completed her doctorate in clinical psychology.
