Come one, come all to the spectacular concerts at our 2021 Summer Retreat! These will feature KlezKanada community members from around the world. Keep reading to learn about each concert and buy your tickets!
After its initial broadcast, each concert will be viewable until the end of the Retreat, at 12 AM ET on Monday, August 30th.
Double Bill: Marilyn Lerner and David Wall // David Buchbinder with Mark Rubin and Michael Ward-Bergeman
Monday, August 23rd – 8:30-9:30 pm EDT
KlezKanada is thrilled to open its 2021 concert series with a double bill featuring some of the most celebrated musicians from Toronto’s rich klezmer and Yiddish music scene. For our first evening, it’s an evening firsts!
In their first performance as a duo at KlezKanada, Marilyn Lerner and David Wall present a Fun yener zayt lid/On the Other Side of the Poem. A culmination, continuation, and collaboration between virtuoso singer and composer David Wall and much-celebrated pianist and composer Marilyn Lerner, the concert features a cycle of their original settings of modern Yiddish poetry from poets such as Avrom Sutzkever, Rokjl Korn, Avrom Reyzen, and Peretz Miransky. In celebration of David’s first time on the KlezKanada stage, the duo will perform several brand new, unrecorded songs, alongside favourites from our debut recording Still Soft Voiced Heart (2002). This concert heralds the arrival of a new album to be released in the spring of 2022.
In his first appearance at KlezKanada, legendary klezmer trumpeter David Buchbinder presents his newest project “Music at the Center of The River.” Along with bassist Mark Rubin and accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman, this New Orleans / Louisiana collaboration blends sounds and styles from Jewish and Roma traditions, with those from New Orleans and the Delta. An exciting musical journey, “Music at the Center of the River” taps into the sounds of multiple traditions, grounded in the present, and reaching into the past.
Get your tickets here!
Sveta Kundish & Patrick Farrell
Tuesday, August 24th – 5:30-6:30 pm EDT
Coming to us from Berlin, Germany, here are fan favourites accordionist Patrick Farrell and vocalist Sveta Kundish! They’ll perform their own original songs, as well as pieces by Suzanna Ghergus, Josh Waletzky, Michael Alpert, and Daniel Kahn, who will appear as a special guest! Join Kundish and Farrell in the poetic musical world they have been creating together since 2013.
Get your tickets here!
Veretski Pass // Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell
Tuesday, August 24th – 8:30-9:30 pm EDT
Virtuosic, highly original, endlessly creative, and oozing with energy, Veretski Pass has been at the forefront of contemporary Yiddish music development for the last two decades. The members of this group –Cookie Segelstein, Joshua Horowitz, and Stuart Brotman – are integral figures of the international klezmer landscape, having paved the way for creative thought within the genre individually and as a group for over 40 years.
Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell is a vocalist, composer, and arranger specializing in Yiddish song. In 2018, Anthony released the album Convergence, a collaboration with Veretski Pass, exploring the sounds of one hundred years of African American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. His duo with keyboardist Dmitri Gaskin, Tsvey Brider, has toured the world and, in 2017, won the Concorso International de Canciones en Idish in Mexico City. Tonight Anthony is joined by pianist, and 2021 KlezKanada Freed Fellow, Uri Schreter.
This concert is co-presented by KlezKanada and the Yiddish Book Center, as part of the Center’s Decade of Discovery initiative. Its theme for 2021 is Yiddish and Social Justice.
Veretski Pass is presented thanks to the generous support of the Zita and Mark Bernstein Family Foundation.
Get your tickets here!
Duo Controverso
Wednesday, August 25th – 5:30-6:30 pm EDT
Duo Controverso are harpist Annette Bjorling and clarinetist Kurt Bjorling. Producing an original sound and style, they are the world’s premier, and possibly only, klezmer harp and clarinet duo. Comfortable traveling through a myriad of styles, their concerts take listeners on a journey through different eras and styles of klezmer and Yiddish music.
Get your tickets here!
Antshtumt Zikh! KlezKanada Faculty Unmuted
Wednesday, August 25th – 8:30-9:30 pm EDT
You asked for it, you got it! The KlezKanada faculty concert is an old tradition from the early days of the Retreat, revived anew– by popular demand!– for the virtual era. KlezKanada’s international faculty is a melting pot of talent and vision, and tonight you can experience a global sampling of what they have to offer. Who knows what you might hear and see? KlezKanada faculty have the most original sound, and tonight they certainly turn it on!
#klezkanada26 #unmuteyourself
Get your tickets here!
Spotlight: 2021 Freed Fellows in Concert
Thursday, August 26th – 5:30-6:30 pm EDT
Each year at KlezKanada’s Summer Retreat, we are joined by a group of rising stars in the world of Yiddish music, arts, and culture. This summer’s Freed Fellows concert features pianist, composer, and ethnomusicologist Uri Schreter, puppeteer Rebecca Turner, clarinetist Susi Evans, and accordionist Szilvia Casaranko.
KlezKanada thanks Noah and Ronit Stern for their generous support of the Ruth and Joe Freed Fellowship Program, named in honour and in loving memory of Noah’s grandparents, Ruth and Joe Freed, z”l.
Get your tickets here!
Ice Cream Social Dance Party
Thursday, August 26th – 8:30-9:30 pm EDT
Dig out your seersucker and gingham and your pastel and candy colours. Spread out your picnic blankets and hang up some bunting. The evening will feature Yiddish dances led by our dance faculty Avia Moore and Steve Weintraub, with music from our amazing in-house band. Swing dancing, slow dancing, and extra special guests will be sprinkled throughout, making the evening even sweeter. BYOIC (Bring Your Own Ice Cream).
Get your tickets here!
Zalmen Mlotek in Concert
Friday, August 27th – 5:30-6:30 pm EDT
A major force in the world of Yiddish music and theatre over the last half-century, Zalmen Mlotek is a pianist, conductor, composer, arranger, and accompanist. He is also the Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the longest running Yiddish theatre in the world, where he has both revived countless Yiddish classics and staged world premieres.
Get your tickets here!