Concert: At Home in Yiddish

Miryem-Khaye Seigel is a Yiddish singer, songwriter, recording artist, actor, and researcher in Yiddish culture who “exemplifies the attempt to bring a centuries-old language and culture into the contemporary world” (New York Times). She has performed throughout the U.S. and internationally, frequently appearing with Shane Baker (Royter Kuter Teater), Hankus Netsky‘s Hebrew National Salvage, and with many other luminaries of the Yiddish and klezmer scene. Her CD of original and adapted songs is “Toyznt tamen=A thousand flavors”. Miryem-Khaye received YIVO’s Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellowship for her research project “The Broder Singers: Forerunners of the Yiddish Theater” and a Folks Arts Apprenticeship to study with master Yiddish song teacher and songwriter Joshua Waletzky. She is co-editor (with Alyssa Quint) of Women on the Yiddish Stage (Legenda, 2023) and a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project.

A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Hankus Netsky is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department, founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and former Vice President for Education at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA.  He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television, collaborated closely with Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Theodore Bikel, Robert Brustein, Eden MacAdam-Somer, Rosalie Gerut, and Robert Pinsky, and produced numerous recordings, including ten by the Klezmer Conservatory Band.  He has taught at McGill University, Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, Hebrew College, and for Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshops.  His essays on Jewish music have been published by the University of California Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, Indiana University Press, the University of Scranton Press, Hips Roads, and the University Press of America.  Temple University Press published his book “Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia” in 2015.