Aaron Alexander is drummer based in NYC. He is leader of Midrash Mish Mosh and a member of Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars, Greg Wall's Later Prophets, Alex Kontorovich's Deep Minor, Hasidic New Wave, Klezmerfest, and has had the privilege of working with the Klezmatics, Adrienne Cooper, German Goldenshteyn, Marilyn Lerner, Ray Musiker, Pete Sokolow, and Alicia Svigals.

Cantor Barry Black was born and raised in Queens, New York. His professional vocal career began at age eighteen, when he was engaged by Congregation Agudath Israel of Miami Beach, thus becoming the youngest cantor in the country. Cantor Black has served as cantor of several prominent synagogues in Florida and New York. He has performed in the Yiddish Theatre productions, and is also a member of the New York State Bar. Cantor Black was featured in the role of a cantor in "Liberty Heights," a Barry Levinson film, released December, 1999.

Dan Blacksberg is one of the few trombonists playing klezmer music on the east coast. He has performed or recorded in the US and abroad with Frank London, Michael Winograd, Aaron Alexander, Susan Watts, Elaine Hoffman Watts, the Klez Dispensers, Hankus Netsky, Alan Bern, Adrienne Cooper, Alex Kontorovitch and the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. These musical associations have brought Blacksberg to such far-flung locales as Hungary, Poland, Austria, Germany, Canada and some strange corners of Brooklyn.

Lauren Brody is an alumna of the pioneering klezmer revival band Kapelye, with whom she toured and recorded for over a decade, and is also a Yiddish singer well known for her unique old-world sound. Lauren leads a parallel life as a performer of the traditional music of Bulgaria and the Balkans, and has won a series of grants to conduct groundbreaking research in Bulgaria on early commercial folk music recordings.

^ Back to top

Mike Cohen is a sax, flute and clarinet player living and working in New York. Mike also leads the klezmer band The Kleztrafobix who have performed their esoteric form of klezmer recently opening for a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Israeli Philharmonic at the Core Center arena in Philadelphia as well as concerts through out the Northeast. He also leads his own jazz quartet which can be heard performing around New York City.

Amy Carrigan has been Associate Administrator at Living Traditions since 2008. She is a theater maker, puppeteer, photographer and singer of music from folk and avant garde improvisational music to classical and jazz. For the past 10 years, Amy has been a core member of the Brooklyn-based puppetry company, Drama of Works, as well as a principal artist in the New York/London-based vocal and movement-based performance group, Experience Vocal Dance Company since 2005. She is the great granddaughter of Armenian Composer, Grikor Mirzaian Suni, and has an innate thirst for traditional music from around the world.

Adrienne Cooper is one of this generation's most influential performers of Yiddish vocal music, appearing on concert, theater, and club stages, recording, teaching and lecturing on Yiddish music around the world. In her day job she is Assistant Executive Director of the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring.

Peggy/Khaye Davis will lead evening activities for children. She has taught at KlezKamp for many years and works as a calligrapher and graphic artist. She also plays flute in the Wholesale Klezmer Band.

Master mixer, cratedigger, musical continent-spanner SoCalled (aka Josh Dolgin) performs and records widely with a crew of mixed-up freaks and geniuses from around the world, including C Rayz Walz, Killah Priest, Matisyahu, Fred Wesley, Susan Hoffman-Watts, Frank London, and Irving Fields. Armed with his Akai MPC, heritage and love for genre-bending music, SoCalled is a Yiddish rapping, accordion wielding, Klezmer hip hop maestro.

^ Back to top

Benjy Fox-Rosen is a Brooklyn based bassist, singer, and composer. He has performed internationally as a member of Luminescent Orchestrii, a Balkan inspired string band, and is also a founding member of PLAY! ensemble, a microtonal improvisation group. In 2007 Benjy was a recipient of the Bronfman Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Student Artists for "Minutn fun Bitokhn" his suite composed around four Yiddish songs. Benjy performs regularly with transylvanian folk band Metrofolk, Jake Shulman-Ment, Michael Winograd, The Amazing Frozen String Quartet and with his own band, Minutn fun Bitokhn, focusing on the songs of, and original setting of poems by Mordechai Gebirtig.

Jill Gellerman has danced, most recently with Frank London and Friends, and taught dance at many institutions--from Western Illinois University to Yiddish Summer Weimar. She has lectured and published on results from an NEH grant documenting hasidic dance and cultural traditions in Brooklyn. In addition to KlezKamp, Jill is a guest artist at YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture and at the annual Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow, Poland.

Sarah Gordon is a Yiddish singer and lyricist who has performed with Frank London, The Klezmatics and Mikveh among others. Her song lyrics have been recorded by Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars, Mikveh, Khevre and The Klezmatics. At 5'2" she is one of the tallest female poets in the history of Yiddish Literature.

^ Back to top

Klezmer flutist and multi-instrumentalist Adrianne Greenbaum teaches through her fusion of historical sensibilities, dance, theory, old recordings and texts. Focusing on the revival of the flute in klezmer, she performs and teaches throughout the US, presenting master classes at universities and flute conferences and is also on the faculties of Klezkanada and Klezmerquerque.

For over 30 years bassist Jim Guttmann has performed in a wide range of venues from smokey dives to Carnegie Hall. He joined the Klezmer Conservatory Band at its inception in 1980 and as a member of the band has performed and recorded with Itzhak Perlman and Joel Grey. In addition to working with KCB he is currently performing klezmer music with Andy Statman, Alicia Svigals' Klezmer Fiddle Express.

Josh Horowitz is the director of Budowitz and co-founder of Veretski Pass. He performs on Tsimbl (Yiddish Dulcimer), 19th Century Button Accordion and Piano and has recorded with numerous ensembles, including the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. He has received over 40 international awards for his work, including the Prize of Honor for orchestral composition, presented by the Austrian government. His books include The Ultimate Klezmer and The Sephardic Songbook.

Miriam Isaacs specializes in Yiddish language and researches Jewish sociolinguistics and Yiddish culture as a tool of identity and empowerment. She has explored the uses of Yiddish language among contemporary Hasidim and has recently written on the works of dramatist Peretz Hirschbein. She has also written on Yiddish culture in the Displaced Person's camps in postwar Germany. Dr. Isaacs has been teaching Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, since 1995. Her teaching includes basic Yiddish language and literature in the original and in translation, as well as courses on Yiddish theater and film, fantasy and the supernatural in Jewish literature and on the immigrant experience in Jewish and other literatures.

Don Jacobs is in charge of live sound and recording inside the Tanzhal. You can find out much more about him at his website: www.inconcertaudio.com. He is always happy to be a part of the Klezkamp whirligig!

Eve Jochnowitz is a culinary ethnographer, chef, baker, and Yiddish instructor at the YIVO institute. She has lectured both in the United States and abroad on food in Jewish tradition, religion, and ritual as well as food in Yiddish performance and popular culture. Ms Jochnowitz is the Chocolate Lady and writes regularly on her blog, In Mol Araan.

^ Back to top

Hailed an "imaginative, thoughtful improviser" (Jewish Week), Alex Kontorovich, a mathematics professor at Brown University, has performed with Fyvush Finkel, Theodore Bikel, Gospel singer Joshua Nelson, at venues such as the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Lincoln Center in New York, the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow. In 2006, Kontorovich produced the only recording to feature the late Moldavian klezmer master, German Goldenshteyn. In 2007 Kontorovich released Deep Minor, his debut as a leader featuring his original compositions. Deemed "an exhilarating blast of fresh, inventive, and inspired music for the 21st century" (JazzReview).

Tine Kindermann is a German visual artist and singer who lives in New York. Her artistic work and recent recordings of old German folk songs draw inspiration from the darker side of folklore and deal with the timeless themes of love and loss, longing and loneliness. Although Tine has been singing for 30 years and worked with artists such as the Klezmatics, Adrienne Cooper, Joanne Borts, Greg Wall, Lorin Sklamberg and others, "Schamlos Schön", which features some of New York’s finest contemporary musicians, is her first solo recording. Most of the songs on the CD, which were first performed live in New York in 2001, are classics of German folk music and were taught to Tine Kindermann by her mother and grandmother. Tine’s dioramas, which are largely inspired by German fairy tales, have been shown at NY Studio Gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art, NYU Galleries, the Toy Theatre Museum, the Manhattan Borough President’s Office and other places.

Bill Kornrich is a community cultural consultant, a descriptor that he dreamed up. He works with a variety of non-profit cultural organizations in the areas of organizational development, needs assessment, community partnerships, and long-range planning. He enjoys stage managing and getting people to work together. He and his wife, Yvonne, live on a ridge overlooking the Clinch River in east Tennessee.

Jazz pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner performs internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana, from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. Lerner's work spans the worlds of jazz, creative improvisation, klezmer, and 20th century classical music. She composes for film, theatre, radio and television. Marilyn has just released her 10th recording, Romanian Fantasy, a solo CD of improvisations on traditional Eastern European Jewish music.

A familiar presence at KlezKamp since 1986, Susan Leviton brings her depth of knowledge, engaging teaching style, and infectious enthusiasm to all things Yiddish. She's an accomplished singer and calligraphic artist who travels as a performing artist-in-residence, sharing Yiddish culture and contemporary Jewish arts. Susan works her magic on commissioned artworks which range from greeting cards and ketubot to large scale wall art for synagogues, JCC's, and independent living centers. Whether in song or visual arts, her work is rooted in tradition and reaches forward to stretch the imagination.

^ Back to top

Sherry Mayrent came to her first KlezKamp in 1987, an accomplished clarinetist in styles other than klezmer. Within a few years, she transitioned from student to apprentice to Staff in 1995 and in 2001, as the Associate Director of Living Traditions and KlezKamp. Her KlezKamp experience led to her becoming the clarinetist and musical director of the Wholesale Klezmer band, the Western Massachusetts ensemble she joined in 1990. She recently left that group to concentrate her energies on the Living Traditions Online Sound Archive, of which she is co-director. She is also a record producer and a prolific composer of traditional klezmer tunes, and has published several books of klezmer charts, as well as creating a volume of traditional klezmer styles for PG Music's auto-accompaniment program, "Band in a Box." Her passion for traditional Yiddish culture is equaled only by her passion for traditional Hawaiian culture.

Dan Peck has been Operations Director for KlezKamp for the last 23 years. He is the creator of the EpesCenter. He is an accomplished old-time musician (banjo and guitar). He is a member of the Buck Mountain Band from Grayson County, Virginia, who are resident musicians at The Blue Ridge Music Center in Galax, Va. Dan produced their new recording Chicken in the Snowbank. He has worked for many years at traditional music festivals and is on the board of the Charlie Poole Music Festival and The National Banjo Initiative in Eden, North Carolina. He designs cataloguing systems for the works of artists including Andy Warhol, Robert Motherwell, Donald Judd and Richard Serra. He is also a published photographer and author of books on database programming and digital photography.

Film composer, flutist and keyboardist Sarah Plant scores features, documentaries and multi-media museum installations. She worked on Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated feature Eat Drink Man Woman and has composed for PBS, ITVS, Bravo, Canal+ (France), CBC (Canada), Hallmark, the Center for Asian American Media, and for Spanish, Swiss and other European TV. Sarah composed a commission for Bill T. Jones Dance Company and has scored American Museum of Natural History biodiversity films. She has received awards/grants from ASCAP, the NEA and the American Music Center. She is former Music Editor of Sing Out! magazine, and specializes in music from around the world. www.sarahplantmusic.com

Ronald Robboy is an independent Yiddish theatre scholar as well as composer and musical investigator. An early West Coast experimentalist in the klezmer revival and a former YIVO research fellow, he was lead researcher for conductor Michael Tilson Thomas's Thomashefsky Project, for whose Carnegie Hall performances Robboy developed groundbreaking musical reconstructions of early Yiddish theatre numbers. He is a long-time cellist in the San Diego Symphony.

Jenny Romaine is a founding member of Obie/Bessie winning Great Small Works theater collective, music director/ring performer in Circus Amok, and a member of the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater's Kids and Yiddish Crew. Romaine collaborates with an intergenerational army of artists committed to keeping new Yiddish theater at the heart of social life.

^ Back to top

Mark Rubin was born to musician parents who met on the University of Arizona marching band and nurtured their son's connection to Judaism and his eclectic musical tastes. The bass and tuba instructor at KlezKamp, a radio and television host, and a music producer, the multi-talented Rubin is also one of the country's most versatile sidemen, adept at a variety of musical style and traditions. He is a founding member of the Bad Livers and has toured internationally with Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars.

Henry "Hank" Sapoznik is a four-time Grammy nominated record producer, radio documentarian, author and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. He won a 2002 Peabody award for his 10 week National Public Radio series "The Yiddish Radio Project" and was nominated for an Emmy for his score to the documentary film "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg." He is a producer for Time-Life Music and is currently working on establishing a National Banjo Museum.

Jan Schwarz is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Germanic Studies of the University of Chicago in Yiddish Studies. As a native of Denmark, he earned a degree in Scandinavian Studies and Comparative Literature at University of Copenhagen, and a Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University. He is the co-editor of POLIN 20: Studies in Polish Jewry (2007) one of several publications in the field of Holocaust Studies. As an experienced Yiddish teacher, he has published The Yiddish Teacher/Der yiddish lerer (2005) with his wife Rebecca Lillian, a dialogue sequence with CDs for beginners and intermediate students.

^ Back to top

Cookie Segelstein plays fiddle with Hank Sapoznik (who finally served her decent barbecue) and Mark Rubin in The Youngers of Zion, is founder of the trio Veretski Pass with Joshua Horowitz and Stu Brotman and plays in Budowitz. With a Master's degree from the Yale School of Music, Cookie plays with the New Haven Symphony as assistant principal viola, and generally plays any kind of music she can to make a living.

Peter Sokolow has had a career in Jewish music, commercial music, and traditional jazz that has spanned over fifty years; he has done more than 10,000 jobs in that time. He has performed with many famous klezmer and jazz players, toured Europe and the U.S. several times, orchestrated three Jewish shows and more than thirty recordings, and appeared in or arranged for several TV "specials"and documentary films. He is the author or co-author of books on klezmer and articles about the klezmer scene, and has lectured extensively. He has taught at KlezKamp since its inception.

Vera Sokolow's connection to Jewish textile art began with membership in the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework and flourished after she crocheted her first yarmulke, designing a keyboard motif for her husband, Peter. Using a multiplicity of hand and machine techniques (e.g. quilting, applique and embroidery), she has since produced challah covers, Purim napkins, more yarmulkes, kittels, shofar bags, wall hangings and several chuppahs.

^ Back to top

An internationally acclaimed klezmer violinist and teacher, Deborah Strauss is a member of the Strauss/Warschauer Duo and was a long-time member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble.

Paula Teitelbaum is a singer and Yiddish teacher, and has been on Klezkamp staff for many years. Her singing has been featured on the recordings Vaserl, Zumerteg, Fli,Fli, Mayn Flishlang, and on the soundtrack of the documentary film Image Before My Eyes. Together with Lorin Sklamberg she co-produced the cd Di Grine Katshke/The Green Duck, which features her singing as well. Paula has taught at the YIVO Summer Intensive Yiddish Program, and has worked as an English as a Second Language and Spanish teacher at John Bowne High School in Queens, NY.

Jeff Warschauer is internationally renowned as a guitarist, mandolinist, Yiddish singer and teacher. He is a member of the Strauss/Warschauer Duo, was a long-time member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and is on the faculty of Columbia University.

Elaine Hoffman Watts is a third-generation klezmer musician, scion of the great Philadelphia Hoffman family of klezmorim. The first woman percussionist to be accepted at Curtis Institute, from which she graduated in 1954, Watts has performed and taught for more than forty years, working in symphonies, theaters, and schools. Despite her skills and family heritage, when she was young Ms. Watts was seldom given opportunities to perform by klezmer bands, from the 1940s on: they didn't want to employ a girl, even Jacob Hoffman's daughter. Ms. Watts began performing klezmer actively again with her daughter Susan Watts. She is a 2007 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship Award.

Susan Watts represents the youngest generation of a Klezmer dynasty that reaches back to the Jewish Ukraine of the 19th century, beginning with her great grandfather, bandleader Joseph Hoffman. She works and records with a range of talented musicians including her mother Elaine Hoffman Watts, Frank London and the Klezmer Brass All-Stars, Mikveh, anad the KlezDispensers.

^ Back to top

Steve Weintraub is a teacher, choreographer, and performer specializing in Jewish dance. He received his training with Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins, and danced for Felix Fibich. He teaches Yiddish dance workshops internationally, leads dancing at Simchas, and collaborated on Hopkele, a cd of music especially for dancing

Laura Wernick is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan's Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Political Science. She is currently working on her dissertation on social justice philanthropy and young donor organizing. More specifically, she is exploring the role of young people with wealth in social justice movements.

Author of Born to Kvetch and Just Say Nu, an overnight sensation at 52, Michael Wex has been teaching at KlezKamp longer than anyone cares to remember. Novelist, playwright, lecturer, performer and authority on language and literature, Wex has been called "a Yiddish National Treasure" and "the finest translator around."

A professional actress, voice-over artist and corporate training consultant for over ten years Marilla Wex first came to KlezKamp from England in 2000 and seemingly never left. She is very proud to be a co-director of the Klezkids program and co-writer of the Klezkids play with her husband Michael. She was not born to kvetch.

Clarinetist Michael Winograd is based in Brooklyn, NY and has taught and performed internationally. He has played with Frank London, Alicia Svigals, Socalled, Joe Morris, Kenny Wollesen, and Jenny Romaine to name a few. Michael's favorite color is purple and he enjoys kreplekh and green tea on the weekends.

^ Back to top