Our Team
Day To Day Operations
Christina Crowder, Executive Director
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.
Clara Byom, Development Director
With a fearless curiosity and multi-instrumental virtuosity (clarinet, accordion, keyboard, electronics), Clara Byom has forged a successful musical career as a versatile performer, composer, and arts administrator whose work stretches across multiple genres—from classical (new and old) to traditional folk, indie rock to electronic music. Clara has premiered over 40 new classical works as soloist, collaborator, or with the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble, which she co-founded in 2016 with Dalton Harris. Since 2020, Clara produced three solo albums of electronic/electroacoustic music, two collaborative albums with lo-fi hip hop/experimental artist Dan Dan, and an experimental improvisation album with Patrick DeBonis. Clara frequently plays for contra, English Country, and International Folk Dance as a soloist and with The Parson Sisters. She is a founding member of the award winning folk rock band Dust City Opera. Clara serves as Development Director for the Klezmer Institute. She holds a Master of Music degree from the University of New Mexico in Clarinet Performance and Musicology (2017) and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Luther College (2012).
Klezmer Institute in the News
Institutional Team Members
Walter Zev Feldman, Academic Advisor
Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music. He is author of the books Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition, and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin, 1996), and Klezmer: Music, History, & Memory (Oxford, 2016), and From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes: Music, Poetry, and Mysticism in the Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh 2022).
His current research interests include the relation of rhythmic cycle (usul) and melody in Ottoman music, and gesture in Ashkenazic Jewish and other dance cultures. Feldman is Artistic Director of the Klezmer Institute.
