News

Already know some Yiddish and want to practise interacting with others? Rivke Margolis is teaching Intermediate Yiddish Language this summer! A relaxed atmosphere, guided conversation exercises, games, songs, outdoor treks, and other fun activities await you! Rivke has taught Yiddish in a variety of settings, from Yiddish retreats to intensive Yiddish language programs. She has been a professor in the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Jewish Studies Program since 2006. Now’s the time to brush up on your Yiddish!

Photo credit: Lindsay Margolis

Beloved KlezKanada faculty members Michael Wex and Shane Baker bring 1920s and ’30s Warsaw Yiddish cabarets to you! Get ready for the new project that Wex created for and debuted at Yiddish Summer Weimar, which will have it’s North American debut at our cabaret this summer! Don’t miss it!

Presented in association with Yiddish Summer Weimar and The Other Music Academy e.V. Sponsored by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Want to come to KlezKanada’s Summer Retreat but can’t make it for the whole week?
A limited number of day passes and evening concert passes are now available!

More information available here:
https://klezkanada.org/laurentian-retreat/day-tickets-and-evening-concert-passes/

Comfortable in Yiddish and want to discuss Yiddish texts in depth this summer? Advanced Yiddish Reading & Discussion: The Beginnings of Modern Yiddish Literature with Eugene Orenstein is perfect for you! You will get to read and study three texts from the beginning of modern Yiddish literature from the late 18th and early 19th century. Eugene recently retired after a 39-year academic career in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University and has been a Guest Professor at Yiddish programs around the world. If you love Yiddish literature, this class is for you!

Tsibele, a band hailing from Brooklyn, is making their KlezKanada debut in the first of our nightly concerts this summer! All of the members of the band have been scholarship students and fellows in years past and we are thrilled to welcome them back as featured performers and faculty members this year. Tsibele’s music is a melting pot of traditional Eastern European klezmer, politically charged anthems, and beautiful new arrangements of Yiddish songs. Their 2017 album, In Droysn iz Finster // It’s Dark Outside, explores themes of life and love under capitalism, tyranny and heteropatriarchy.

18 May, 2020

KlezKanada is pleased to announce that our annual 25th Anniversary Summer Retreat will be held online this year, August 24-28th! While full program details will be released next month, we wanted to let you know some important information about this exciting event.

For this celebration, the Retreat will feature an all-star faculty of the world’s finest practitioners of klezmer music and Yiddish culture from across Canada and around the world. Join us for four full days of programming for all ages, backgrounds, and levels. You can expect a wide variety of offerings in instrumental klezmer music, song, and dance, classes and lectures on Yiddish language and culture, film screenings, first-class concerts, late night programming, plus social gatherings, opportunities for connection, and so much more. As best we can, we’ll be recreating some of our most beloved traditions, while building some new ones for the digital age.

KlezKanada is committed to keeping this virtual retreat as accessible and affordable as possible. Participation fees will be kept as low as possible and registrants will be able to sign up for a single session or concert, a multiple-day long course, or an all-access pass to the whole week’s worth of programming. We’ll have ample assistance available to help participants navigate new technologies and platforms, and programming will be spread throughout the day and evening, so anyone anywhere in any time zone can join us!

This summer we have also expanded the opportunities available through our Azrieli Scholarship Program for up to 100 recipients. Learn more about this program, open to emerging artists and scholars ages 16-35, and by clicking here. Apply now! (Priority deadline is June 15th, 2020!)

If you had already registered and paid a deposit for KlezKanada’s in-person retreat, please consider donating these funds to support our work during these challenging times. You may also use this deposit as payment towards the cost of a week-long pass for this summer’s virtual retreat, or you may request a refund. Please email at info@klezkanada.org and we’ll be happy to make the arrangements.

KlezKanada is proud to announce our support and participation in the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network – QAHN‘s newest project “A Different Tune”: Musical Heritage in English-Speaking Quebec!

As an organization that sustains and nurtures Yiddish culture, KlezKanada fosters a minority culture in Quebec. This 15-month program provides an opportunity for minority language Quebecers to share their musical heritage within their communities and beyond.

Stay tuned for updates!

Learn more about QAHN on their website below:

http://qahn.org/

Thanks to a generous grant from Federation CJA and the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal, KlezKanada piloted a new program this fall entitled Klezmer in the Schools.

Led by KlezKanada faculty member Rachel Lemisch, this initiative brought a full klezmer curriculum to a group of Grade 10 boys at Montreal’s Selwyn House school. Over the course of several weeks, the students learned the basics of playing klezmer and a bit of Jewish history and culture too!

Mazl-tov, yinglekh!

We are excited to welcome back one of the foremost clarinetists of the klezmer revival: Margot Leverett! Leverett was the original clarinetist in the Klezmatics and founded her own band “Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys”, which combines klezmer and bluegrass. She will be teaching workshops throughout the week and her concert on the art of the klezmer clarinet is not to be missed!

From Freylekhs to Foxtrot, from Sher to Swing, from Terkisher to Tango! As the famous song popularized by clarinetist Naftule Brandwein asks: “Where were you during prohibition?” The KlezKanada Speakeasy, of course!

It’s time to deck out, so don’t be shy – slip into your finest 1920s attire and inconspicuously make your way to the dance party of the year! Thursday night at our Summer Retreat will feature all of your favourite Yiddish dances, as well as social dances of the 20s, 30s and 40s. But wait, there’s more: KlezKanada’s premier singers, thespians, comedians and more are also on call to make this truly a once in a summer experience!

Photo credit: the Hulton Archive

KlezKanada is pleased to announce that, starting in December, Sebastian Schulman will be joining our team as Executive Director!

Photo: Sergei Tkachuk

Sebastian comes to KlezKanada most recently from the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he worked as a development officer and directed translation initiatives for the past several years. To this position at KlezKanada he brings almost ten years of experience in non-profit management and fundraising, and a background as a scholar, teacher, and translator of Yiddish culture and Jewish history.

Sebastian is already a part of the KlezKanada family, having served on the faculty several times since he first attended the festival in 2009. Borekh-habo et bienvenue! Please join us in welcoming Sebastian!

Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, a multi-year KlezKanada scholarship recipient, specializes in Yiddish song, Hasidic nigunim, and chazones.

“KlezKanada helped me figure out what the constellations of the Jewish music world are; the people who founded the institutions that we’re all benefiting from, and the up-and-comers who are creating the institutions of tomorrow.”

Eager to tell others about KlezKanada, especially young musicians, Anthony relates, “Knowing a place like KlezKanada exists, knowing those things happen every year, gives me an immense amount of freedom about the possibilities what I could do musically – not only to be creative but to collaborate with others, to be part of a creative movement. When I meet someone who is even remotely interested in any of those things, especially younger people, I want to give them that experience. I encourage them to go to KlezKanada because it opens up all these horizons, both internal and external.”

Though he is a singer, he has also enjoyed participating in vocals-adjacent programming at KlezKanada, experiencing music as a dancer in dance classes, and connecting to the instrumentalists’ perspective in ensemble workshops.

After his first experience at KlezKanada, Anthony wished connect with the folk music from his own African-American tradition. “As I began to learn more about it and about Ashkenazi folk and religious music, it just felt natural to try and combine them where the texts and melodies seemed to interact and have dialogue with each other.”

Following this theme, Anthony has collaborated to create an album, “Convergence”, with Jewish band Veretski Pass, whose members he got to know better over the course of their work at KlezKanada. “Convergence” combines over a hundred years of African-American and Ashkenazi Jewish music to explore themes of exile, spirituality, hope and redemption.

In November, Anthony will be performing in Berlin at a Yiddish culture festival, telling his story as a singer of Yiddish through monologue and wordless nigunim. “The wordless melody is one of the most direct, approachable, emotional parts of Jewish music – a way to tell a story.” At KlezKanada, nigunim are shared at Shabbes Tisch (led by Sruli Dresdner, Lisa Mayer, Jeff Warschauer, and Deborah Strauss); Anthony, among many others, highlights this as a particularly beloved experience.

Anthony eagerly anticipates being reunited with distant friends at KlezKanada. “A whole part of the KlezKanada experience is getting off the bus and seeing someone you haven’t seen the entire year, running towards them screaming. When you actually see them… It’s magical.”

This post is part of a new series of interview-articles by Ari Lewis-Weigens.

For many participants, KlezKanada’s youth scholarship programs are a life-changing experience. We feel a great sense of nakhes as we watch the participants and alumni of our program become performers, teachers, and leaders around the world. We thought it was about time that we caught up with some of our current and “graduated” scholarship students to feature their experiences of KlezKanada (and beyond).

Daniel Toretsky has attended KlezKanada as a scholarship student since 2008, with his father Jeffrey and sister Abigail, who all play together in the klezmer band Mrs. Toretsky’s Nightmare.

As an architect, Daniel pays particular attention to the importance of places and spaces. “KlezKanada gave my musical and Jewish identity a new centre, geographically, and socially. For some people their Jewish centre is Jerusalem, the Western Wall, their synagogue, or somewhere else – but without a doubt I would say KlezKanada.”

As a trombonist, Daniel has attended KlezKanada’s low brass instrumental classes taught by Dan Blacksberg and Rachel Lemisch.

“Those classes are always a treat! It’s like brass yoga in the morning, a moment to recalibrate yourself with your horn – a solid starting point for the day, un-chaotic, just you and that deep drone around you.”

Daniel also participates in the larger ensemble classes where he enjoys learning tunes by ear and connecting with the other musicians to play both new and old Jewish music. Though he is primarily an instrumentalist, Daniel participates in the diverse range of programming offered at KlezKanada. Since he often plays in dance bands, Daniel has also enjoyed opportunities to take dance classes.

As a matter of fact, what Daniel considers the highlight of his week at KlezKanada involves no instruments at all: the nigunim. After dinner on Shabbes, KlezKanadians can join Sruli Dresdner, Lisa Mayer, Jeff Warschauer, and Deborah Strauss at the Shabbes Tish. Daniel finds himself speechless trying to convey what the Tish is and why it means so much to him. “I’ve never been able to explain it to anyone who hasn’t already been there.” In a darkened room lit only by trays of candles, people gather closely, sitting shoulder to shoulder, and join together in wordless song. The room becomes filled by the warmth and joy of people connected in a timeless meditative moment, extended for hours from melody to melody. Throughout the week at KlezKanada, Daniel attends the Nigunim for Peace class led by Sruli Dresdner and Zach Mayer, learning nigunim and other Hasidic vocal melodies, which will be sung on Friday night at the Tisch. Daniel especially appreciates that the Tisch reflects KlezKanada as an inclusive community and environment. “If you look up these nigunim on Youtube, they’re sung by men in shtreimls at a wedding, while the women are somewhere unseen. We’re the heirs to this incredibly rich history, and singing it with diversity of race, gender, sexuality is really important for bringing it into the 21st century.”

For Daniel, the ubiquitous jam sessions are another high point. At KlezKanada there is always a jam happening somewhere. “I learned so much by just jamming really late into the night with professional musicians – listening to them, having them nudge me and telling me to start playing. I was able to learn from them even if we didn’t speak the same language.”

You can see more of Daniel’s work at his website www.danieltoretsky.com
Music in the embedded video is by Abraham Inc.

This post is part of a new series of interview-articles by Ari Lewis-Weigens.

Never taken Yiddish before? Conversational Yiddish for Beginners is for you! Come learn the basics of Yiddish conversation, reading, and writing in a relaxed and fun “crash course” style environment with Asya Vaisman Schulman this summer. Asya is the director of the Yiddish Language Institute at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA. She is also a Yiddish dance teacher, singer, and songwriter and has participated in and taught at klezmer festivals around the world. If you don’t already love Yiddish, taking this class will ensure that you do!

Photo credit: Ben Banhart

KlezKanada is thrilled to announce that noted poet and activist, Irena Klepfisz, will be leading this summer’s intensive Poetry Workshop. Irena’s extensive body of writing reflects her commitment to socialist secular Jewish identity and to Yiddish women’s creative and intellectual work. She will also be leading a literary workshop on stories by Yiddish women writers. Irena is the author of a collection of essays, Dreams of an Insomniac and of poems, A Few Words in the Mother Tongue. Most recently, she co-edited The Stars Bear Witness: The Jewish Labor Bund 1897-2017. She was awarded an NEA fellowship in poetry and recognized with the Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award.

Irena Klepfisz is co-presented with the Polish Cultural Institute, New York.