Ashkenaz is pleased to co-present as part of this year's Toronto Jewish Film Festival online, an eclectic collection of wonderful new short films from around the world, produced in the Yiddish language. Selections include a magical-realist comedy set in Hasidic Brooklyn, two masterly-directed films based on stories by Sholem Aleichem and Franz Kafka, and two charming English shorts show a younger generation reflecting on the Yiddish language and values they have inherited.The 8o minute program is available for streaming at…

Ashkenaz is pleased to partner with Warsaw's POLIN Museum to present the online premiere of a newly-commissioned song suite by the brilliant Polish pianist and composer Marcin Masecki. He is joined for the performance by Mike Marshall, one of the world’s greatest mandolin virtuosos, and leader of The Ger Mandolin Orchestra. Masecki's suite is inspired by the pre-WWII Polish-Jewish mandolin traditions to which the Ger Mandolin Orchestra has so powerfully paid tribute (watch highlights below of the group's 2013 performance…

Ashkenaz is honoured to participate in this year's Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Memorial Concert and Award show, streamed from New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage Safra Hall. This annual event was created in honour of the late great singer and researcher Adrienne Cooper z”l (1946-2011), who was a towering figure in the Yiddish revival and graced Ashkenaz stages so many times. This year’s event features a new performance from the recipient of this year's award and another Ashkenaz alumni,…

Ashkenaz is the exclusive Canadian partner in the presentation of  National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's livestream concert "Soul to Soul," presented on the US national holiday of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 18, 2021 at 4pm (EDT). Soul to Soul marks the historical connections between two peoples and two cultures whose destinies have so often intersected.  The common struggle against oppression and discrimination, and the ongoing strivings for equal rights and social justice have brought about alliances and…

Ashkenaz and Yiddish Summer Weimar mark this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a very special performance by the first ‘supergroup’ of the Klezmer Revival. At the heart of Brave Old World’s “Song of the Lodz Ghetto” (“Duz gezang fin geto Lodzh”) are rare songs of protest and satire performed in the streets of Poland’s Lodz Ghetto between 1940 and 1944, part of an oral legacy that was preserved by ethnomusicologist Gila Flam in the late 1980’s. But this program…

For over 30 years, Brave Old World has been one of the most innovative Jewish music ensembles on the planet. Their groundbreaking work has stretched the boundaries of klezmer and Yiddish music into new realms and has inspired multiple generations of artists and audiences. Individually and in other projects, each of the members of this 'supergroup' have been essential to shaping today's New Jewish Music scene. Join Michael Alpert, Alan Bern, Kurt Bjorling and Stuart Brotman, live together on Facebook…

Flory Jagoda, also known as “The Keeper of the Flame” and “La Nona” (The Grandmother) passed away aged 97 on Friday, January 29, 2021, erev shabbat shira (sabbath of singing). May her memory be a blessing. This hourlong 2014 documentary weaves the life story of NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award winner, Flory Jagoda z"l, with her 2013 Celebration Concert at the US Library of Congress. The combined personal and musical overviews open a window on pre-Inquisition Spanish Jewish life. Flory’s…

On Sunday March 8, 1998, Ashkenaz teamed up with the Bloor JCC and Downtown Jewish Community Council to present a festive Purim party at the Bloor JCC (AKA. the current MNJCC). The event took place in the old gym (what is now the Al Green Theatre) and included various family friendly entertainments, including an off-the-wall Purim Shpiel written by and featuring Michael Wex, along with David Wall (as “The King” Elvis, in a role he’d later reprise as part of…