Composer/violinist Alicia Svigals is the world's leading klezmer violinist and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, which she co-directed for seventeen years. She has written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet, playwright Tony Kushner, documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand, singer/songwriters Debbie Friedman, Diane Birch et al, and has collaborated with them as a performer and improviser as well as with poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Gary Lucas and Najma Akhtar, and many others. She has appeared on David Letterman, MTV, Good Morning America, PBS' Great Performances, on NPR's Prairie Home Companion, Weekend Edition and New Sounds, and on the soundtrack for the L-Word. Her klezmer roots band, Alicia Svigals' Klezmer Fiddle Express, plays at festivals around the U.S. and the world (samples here).
Svigals was awarded the Foundation for Jewish Culture's annual New Jewish Music Network Music Commission for her original live score tothe 1918 film the Yellow Ticket, which she is currently touring, and a Trust for Mutual Understanding grant to bring that work to Poland next year. She has been a fellow at LABA - a non-religious house of study and culture laboratory at the 14th St. Y in NYC which every year invites a group of artists to consider ancient texts and create work that pushes the boundaries of what Jewish art can be; while at LABA she composed a song cycle based on Yiddish poetry (samples here). In 2014 Svigals was an NEA Macdowell Fellow.
Jazz pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner performs to acclaim internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana, from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. Her musical career has been marked by a deep exploration of traditional and free jazz, new music tinged improvisation, and Ashkenazic folk music. Lerner has appeared with Tito Puente, Gerry Hemingway, and Steve Lacy. In the New Jewish music scene, she performs with Adrienne Cooper, Frank London, Alicia Svigals and David Wall.
A prolific recording artist, her most recent work includes: Live in Madrid, (Cadence records), with New York based Ken Filiano-bass and Lou Grassi-drums, and the Ugly Beauties Trio with Matt Brubeck (the late great Dave’s youngest son!) cello and Nick Fraser, drums. She also tours and performs with the Dutch based avant-garde Ig Henneman Sextet :with Axel Dorner, Wilbert de Joode, Lori Freedman and Ab Baars.