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April 2019
Yiddish Spring events
This spring, Ashkenaz celebrates Yiddish culture - past, present and future – with a city-wide initiative featuring exhibitions, concerts, screenings, lectures, and workshops. The lynchpin of this project is Ashkenaz’s partnership in presenting a unique exhibition and sound installation at the Canadian Language Museum from April 4 to June 27, featuring the work of Berlin-based musician Paul Brody and Toronto-based Yiddish doctoral student Miriam Borden (click here for more info). With the CLM as a homebase, numerous other events and…
Find out more »Yiddish Spring at Canadian Language Museum
This spring, Ashkenaz partners with the Canadian Language Museum to present a multi-media celebration of oral and written Yiddish. Berlin-based composer Paul Brody has created an exciting sound installation for the CLM based on the voice-melodies of Toronto Yiddish speakers. To create The Music of Yiddish Blessings and Curses Brody interviewed eight Yiddish speakers to explore their favorite curses and blessings, as well as the stories and memories behind them. He discovered that as the Yiddish speakers, young and old,…
Find out more »May 2019
World Fiddle Day
Klezmer takes the spotlight as Ashkenaz teams up with World Fiddle Day as part of Yiddish Spring, at the Canadian Language Museum. Philadelphia-based guest artists Deborah Strauss and Jeff Warschauer have been prominent figures in the Klezmer/Yiddish revival for nearly four decades as both performers and instructors. Come join them for a day devoted to learning, listening and playing the klezmer tradition on stringed instruments. Workshop participants will learn rhythms, melodies, chords and more, by ear (with sheet music available) as…
Find out more »Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird
Detroit-born, Berlin-based Daniel Kahn is a leading light of the New Yiddish culture scene and a perennial Ashkenaz Festival favourite. As a singer, songwriter, actor, translator, poet and multi-instrumentalist, he has performed worldwide in numerous incarnations, and achieved YouTube viral stardom with his Yiddish translation/performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” But it is with his band, the Painted Bird, that Kahn delivers his most poignant work. Against a klezmer-punk musical canvas, Kahn tackles timeless themes of class struggle, social justice, trauma,…
Find out more »July 2019
Canada Day at Aga Khan Museum
Ashkenaz is pleased to be part of "Rythyms of Canada," the Aga Khan Museum's free multicultural Canada Day celebrations this weekend. Sunday June 30, 12-11pm & Monday July 1, 12-6pm Aga Khan Museum, 77 Wynford Dr. (Eglinton/DVP) Enjoy live music, food vendors, a Middle Eastern souk-style artisan market, family-friendly activities, dance workshops, and more, in a celebration of Canada's dynamic mix of world views, cultures, stories, and rhythms. Full event listings available on Facebook. Join us at 1pm…
Find out more »Shalom Bollywood
Ashkenaz is pleased to participate for the first time in Mississauga’s Bollywood Monster Mashup, Canada’s largest South Asian Festival. In partnership with our friends at MonstrARTity, Polyphonic Ground and Toronto Jewish Film Festival, we are presenting a special FREE screening of SHALOM BOLLYWOOD: THE UNTOLD STORY OF INDIAN CINEMA (2017, 76 mins, Directed by Danny Ben-Moshe). This colourful feature length documentary reveals the unlikely story of the 2000-year old Indian Jewish community and its formative place in shaping the world’s…
Find out more »September 2019
Shalom Bollywood – Encore Screening
Sunday September 8, 2pm Lodzer Centre - 12 Heaton St $5 BUY TICKETS Presented by Congregation Bina, in memory of Diana Abraham z"l https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX03up3RhKI&t=14s
Find out more »A Celebration of Yiddish Kite(s)
Luftmentshen unite! Ashkenaz and Ontario Yiddishkayt (OY!) are coming together to add a Yiddish twist to Toronto's signature kite-flying event, Toronto Windfest. Our free, all-ages celebration of Yiddish Kite(s) (get it?) takes place at Woodbine Beach on Sunday September 22, 12-4pm. Bring your own kite or decorate one of ours and make it your own (limited quantity, first come first served). Bring a picnic lunch and snacks, lawnchairs, beach blankets, a bathing suit (?), your friends and family of all…
Find out more »October 2019
Yemen Blues plays “Hallel”
Wednesday October 30, 2019, 8:30PM Price: $50, $45 Friends, $37.50 students and seniors Includes same-day Museum admission BUY TICKETS We are pleased to partner with Aga Khan Museum to welcome back to Toronto one of Israel’s most exciting ensembles, with a brand new program. At once uproarious and deeply spiritual, Yemen Blues fuses Afrofunk groove and Yemenite Jewish culture in a unique and explosive brew that has garnered world-wide acclaim. Magnetic frontman Ravid Kahalani leads the nine-piece ensemble in their…
Find out more »November 2019
Primo Levi and Vasily Grossman: A Dialogue Between Witnesses
A theatrical reading with live music for Holocaust Education Week 2019 With Michael Miranda and Cantor Charles Osborne, readers Robbie Grunwald, piano | Drew Jurecka, violin, clarinet Saturday November 9, 2019, 8pm Temple Sinai, 210 Wilson Ave. Tickets $15 +HST in advance / $20 at the door CLICK TO PURCHASE TICKETS "Why remember? It is the writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth. Those who would turn their…
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