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A chance encounter in Tokyo a few years ago led to the sharing of a unique corpus of musical manuscripts from the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine previously unavailable to klezmer musicians and scholars. This concert will showcase some of the instrumental and vocal music in the corpus, including lively dance tunes, a high-falutin Polonaise to welcome an honored guest, and powerful niggunim for the Rabbi's tish. We’ll explore S. An-ski’s radical vision that the folklore of the Jewish people is an oral Torah as important as the Talmud of the sages. This vision inspired the An-ski ethnographic expeditions of 1912-1914 when these hand written music manuscripts were collect, and are the backdrop for An-ski’s most famous work, The Dybbuk. An-ski hoped that the Jewish people would become Zamlers (collectors) who would continue to engage with Ashkenazic folklore as a living, breathing legacy. We invite you to join our “community expedition” into this extraordinary discovery!
This program is free and open to the public. Suggested donation of $18 per person supports free programs like this one. Registration is not required. Seating is first-come, first-served.
"The Lost Klezmer Music of Ukraine" is sponsored by the Klezmer Institute. Learn more about The Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project.
Raffi Boden — Cello
Raffi Boden is a NY-based cellist, composer, improviser and educator known for his versatility and innovation in a variety of genres. Equally at home in classical and klezmer, Raffi holds a Masters from the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Krosnick and a frequent performer with the Axiom ensemble. He holds a BM in music and BA in French from Oberlin College & Conservatory, where he was the winner of the 2018 Concerto Competition, served as Principal Cellist of the Oberlin Orchestra in their 2019 Carnegie Hall performance, and premiered several works with the Contemporary Ensemble. Raffi has won fellowships to study at the Kneisel Hall and Aspen festivals and in 2023 was a featured performer at the Caroga Lake Arts Festival.
In the klezmer world, Raffi is a member of the band Mamaliga, with whom he’s performed internationally as faculty at Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKanada and Yiddish New York. Their debut album of original klezmer compositions, Dos Gildn Bletl, was released in 2021 and hailed as “virtuosic and vibrant.” He is also a member of the six-piece chamber-jazz ensemble Simone Baron & Arco Belo, with whom he’s performed at the Kennedy Center and the Jazz Gallery.
Christina Crowder — Accordion
Christina has been performing and researching Jewish music for thirty years, beginning in Budapest, Hungary in 1993 as a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye, and continuing with a Fulbright grant to Romania to document Jewish music in 1999, and since 2002 with an active research, teaching, and performing career in the US. She is Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute, which has been awarded three NEH Grants for Institute projects (2021-2025). Current projects include compilation of a folio of Jewish-adjacent Moldavian music, and publication of selected field recordings from the Fulbright grant period. Christina lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and performs with her klezmer quartet Bivolița. She also performs regularly with Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentschen, the Dave Levitt Klezmer Trio and many others. She has been a guest instructor in klezmer accordion and ensemble performance in the US, Canada, and Europe, and was both musical director and performer in the 2019 Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the 2020 ART Portland productions of the Broadway play “Indecent.” With the Klezmer Institute, Christina edited the Levitt Legacy music folio, and has led KMDMP artist residency programs in Connecticut, western Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, France, and Belgium.
Keryn Kleiman — Violin
Keryn Kleiman is a New York-based violinist specializing in Jewish and Eastern European folk styles. She is a member of a number of klezmer groups, including Bivolita, the New York Fidl Kepelye, and Kadya’s Project and has performed classical and folk music internationally and nationally. Notable recent engagements include playing with renowned klezmer musicians at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has taught at Klezkanada and Yiddish New York. Keryn graduated with a degree in ethnomusicology from Columbia University-Barnard College, where she was the student-leader of the Columbia Klezmer Band. She was awarded a grant to research Jewish music and its relationship to co-territorial repertoires in Moldova. Since then, she has focused on Bessarabian and Romanian styles, studying in Moldova and Romania. Keryn attended the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a Preparatory Division Concerto Competition Winner. She also recently completed her doctorate in clinical psychology.
About the Klezmer Institute
The Klezmer Institute is a digital-first organization founded to support Ashkenazic expressive culture—the embodied expression of eastern European Jewishness that connects language, gesture, dance, song, instrumental music, religious practice, and contemporary Jewish identity under an interdisciplinary umbrella of study. Though deeply entwined with Jewish religious practice, Ashkenazic expressive culture reflects a secular expression of Jewish culture that resonates deeply for many people, and acts as a grounding force across a broad spectrum of Jewish identity in the contemporary world. Klezmer Institute projects focus on collaborative work—research, teaching, publishing, and programming—with the explicit aim of empowering klezmer and Ashkenazic cultural communities around the world to engage with, learn about, and create anew in this essential cultural legacy as well as proven positive outreach to non-Jews through live events and recordings.
