Alicia Svigals & Pete Rushefsky @ Tonic (NYC) Klezmer Brunch June 1

[Pete Rushefsky <klezbanjo...>]

PRESENTING:

Alicia Svigals (violin) & Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl)

Sizzling traditional and innovative Jewish music for violin and hammered 
dulcimer featuring Klezmatics & Mikveh founder Alicia Svigals.

Live on New York?s Lower East Side

Tonic?s Klezmer Brunch, curated by David Krakauer

Date: Sunday, June 1, 2003

Time: 2 Sets?1:30 and 3:00

Place: Tonic (www.tonicnyc.com), 

107 Norfolk St. (between Delancey and Rivington)

F train to Delancey/Essex St.

Admission: $10 per set or $15 for both.

Contact: Pete Rushefsky (prushefsky (at) yahoo(dot)com, 716-713-4293)

 

BIOGRAPHIES 


Alicia Svigals

www.aliciasvigals.com

Violinist 


Alicia Svigals, violinist/composer, a founder of the Klezmatics and of the 
all-women band Mikveh, is considered by many to be the world's foremost klezmer 
fiddler. During the past decade, she almost singlehandedly revived klezmer 
fiddle playing, which came close to extinction in this century; traditional 
klezmer violin style is now being played again by hundreds of her students, 
including most of today's best professional players. She taught and toured with 
violinist Itzhak Perlman, who as duets with Ms. Svigals accompanied by the 
Klezmatics, and she was awarded first prize at the Safed, Israel international 
klezmer festival competition.

She has been featured (as a soloist and with Mikveh) in V-Day gala performances 
of playwright Eve Ensler's Obie-winning The Vagina Monologues, most recently at 
Madison Square Garden with Phoebe Snow, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Whoopi 
Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Wynona Ryder, Calista Flockhart, Lily Tomlin, 
Margaret Cho, Erica Jong, Brooke Shields, and Rita Wilson. She has composed for 
the Kronos Quartet, and has been written for by composer Osvaldo Golijov who 
was commissioned by Merkin Concert Hall to create a work featuring Ms. Svigals 
and clarinetist David Krakauer (soon to be released on CD as Rocketekiya). She 
has appeared as a soloist on NPR's New Sounds Live and at festivals such as 
FiddleFest in New York's Central Park, Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA, and 
the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Her debut solo album Fidl (Traditional Crossroads) 
is the world's very first klezmer fiddle CD.

In Svigals' band the Klezmatics, she and five other musicians created 
contemporary Jewish roots music that combined the joyous and mystical Yiddish 
folk tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and an overtly political world view. 
For sixteen years, Svigals toured internationally with the Klezmatics and 
recorded five albums which reached the top ten of the Billboard, College Music 
Journal, and European World Music Charts. She appeared with the Klezmatics on 
Prairie Home Companion, Rosie O'Donnell's Kids are Punny, Good Morning America, 
Fox After Breakfast, MTV News, Nickelodeon, NPR's New Sounds, and BBC 
television and radio, and she was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition. As a 
composer for the group, she provided music for theater, dance and film, 
including the score to Tony Kushner's plays A Dybbuk (at the Public Theater) 
and It's an Undoing World (Ford Theater, LA), Judith Helfand's P.O.V. 
documentary A Healthy Baby Girl, and collaborations with poets Allen Ginsburg 
and Jerome Rothenberg, Israeli singer Chava Alberstein, and K.D. Lang's 
songwriter/producer Ben Mink. Her multi-media project The Third Seder, 
featuring Tony Kushner, choreographer David Dorfman, author Sarah Shulman, 
visual artist Neil Goldberg, and the Klezmatics, was presented by La Mama, Etc. 
and the Jewish Museum in New York. Ms. Svigals and the Klezmatics recorded two 
albums for EMI with violinist Itzhak Perlman, one of which is one of the 
best-selling folk albums of all time. They performed with him on PBS' 
Emmy-winning Great Performances documentary In the Fiddler's House and on Late 
Night With David Letterman, and appeared with Mr. Perlman in concert at Radio 
City Music Hall, Tanglewood, Wolf Trap and other venues.

Ms. Svigals plays and writes in genres ranging from heavy metal to New Age to 
Greek island fiddle. Her rock career includes appearances with Robert Plant and 
Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin at the Boston Fleet Center and Hartford Civic 
Center, Bob Newirth and John Cale's (Velvet Underground and Rolling Thunder 
Revue) album The Last Day On Earth, and the Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever 
Amen. She performed and recorded improvisations for New Music artists Marc 
Ribot and John Zorn. Her composing credits include the soundtracks to Judith 
Helfand's documentary The Uprising of 1934, with Svigals on fiddle and singer 
Peggy Seeger in an old-timey flavored score, string quartet parts for Jewish 
spiritual singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman at her Carnegie Hall appearances 
and live album, and new live music for N.Y. choreographer Risa Jaroslow, with 
whom she appeared at Lincoln Center. Most recently, she is featured on Hasidic 
superstar Avraham Fried's Avinu Malkeynu, and she was hired by Chabad rabbi and 
producer Zalman Goldstein to arrange Lubavitcher nigunim (wordless spirituals) 
for her klezmer quartet on the newly-released Vodkazak.

Alicia Svigals leads lectures and workshops on Jewish music for adults and 
children, directs klezmer string orchestras, loves to play weddings and bar and 
bas mitzvahs, and has published articles on Jewish music and culture. 

 

PETE RUSHEFSKY

Tsimblist



Pete Rushefsky is a leading revivalist of the tsimbl, or Jewish hammered 
dulcimer. A string instrument played like a xylophone, the tsimbl spread from 
its medieval roots with migrating Jewish musicians throughout Central and 
Eastern Europe. Sadly, as a result of pressures such as the Holocaust, 
assimilation in the New World and changing musical tastes, the Jewish tsimbl 
tradition died out in the first half of the twentieth century. 

Today Pete Rushefsky is one of a handful of brave young klezmer musicians to 
use musicological field and archival research in recreating a performance style 
for this mystical zither. Accomplished as a virtuoso soloist and much in-demand 
for his sympathetic accompaniment style, Rushefsky has taught on the faculty of 
KlezKamp and performs with some of the leading performers of the klezmer 
revival, including Steven Greenman, Rebecca Kaplan and Alicia Svigals. He won 
much critical acclaim for his recent album with violinist Elie Rosenblatt 
entitled "Tsimbl un Fidl: Klezmer Music for Hammered Dulcimer and Violin" 
(available from Hatikvah Music and Amazon.com). Additionally, Rushefsky has 
authored a pioneering instructional book/tape entitled "The Essentials of 
Klezmer 5-String Banjo, Volume I" (available from Elderly Instruments). He has 
recently relocated to Syracuse, NY along with a horde of string instruments. 



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