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Queer Jewish Weddings Concert - About the Performers

Adrienne Cooper is one of the most influential performers of Yiddish vocal music, and has appeared in venues around the world. She received her musical training at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem , and holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in History from Hebrew University and the University of Chicago . Ms Cooper is currently Director of Program Development for the Workmen's Circle / Arbeter Ring. Her singing has been featured on film, radio, television and some twenty recordings including Partisans of Vilna , the only Yiddish recording ever nominated for a Grammy. Ms. Cooper has performed and recorded with, among others, The Klezmatics, Hasidic New Wave, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Kapelye, and Frank London's Shekhine Big Band. On Valentine's Day, 1998, she debuted with Mikveh, her new all-star women's klezmer band in Obie-Award winning playwright Eve Ensler's star-studded V-Day Benefit, sharing the stage with Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Phoebe Snow and others. At the invitation of the Jewish World Service and the Jewish Community Development Fund, Ms. Cooper travels each summer to Russia to train a new generation of Jewish musicians from throughout the former Soviet territories. For two decades, Ms. Cooper has initiated groundbreaking musical, theatrical and educational projects. As Assistant Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, she co-founded the Yiddish Folk Arts Program, popularly known as KlezKamp, the internationally recognized model for multi-generational folk art education now in its 14th year. She designed and hosted the Merkin Concert Hall's children's concert series on ethnic diversity within Jewish music. Ms. Cooper also co-wrote and starred in The Memoirs of Gluckl of Hameln , presented to acclaim in New York at the legendary La Mama Annex. New York City 's Jewish Museum has commissioned her to curate concert programs to accompany several of its exhibitions, most recently Chagall's Kaleidoscope, a multi-media program in French, Russian and Yiddish.

Sara Felder is a solo theater artist, playwright and professional juggler. She has toured internationally with Jugglers for Peace in Cuba , the Women's Circus in Nicaragua , the Klezmatics in Germany , and has performed at Festivals of Jewish/Yiddish Culture in Berlin , London , Amsterdam , Los Angeles , New York and Toronto . National tours include Joel Grey's Borscht Capades , and three years with the Pickle Family Circus . She has performed her highly-acclaimed solo play June Bride: the story of a traditional Jewish lesbian wedding , in over 30 cities in North America . She is also touring her solo play, Shtick! a queer play on Jewish vaudeville, which was originally commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission. Felder has been an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, and the California Arts Council, the latter for her work teaching juggling and performance in California prisons. Her play, The Lady Upstairs : a love story about atomic fission has enjoyed two San Francisco productions. Sara is a recipient of the California Arts Council artist fellowship in playwriting. She has also been awarded the Arts in America 's “Animating Democracy Initiative” which used art to inspire civic dialogue about same-sex marriage in Anchorage , AK . Sara has been recently commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission and the Irvine Foundation's New Plays Initiative to write a new play called, “Keeping Up With the Joans” that uses oral histories to tell the stories of three Bay Area theatre treasures named Joan. She currently lives in Philadelphia where she is a member of the Pennsylvania Performing Artists on Tour.

Exhilarating jazz pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner performs to acclaim internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana , from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine . Her groundbreaking recordings have garnered recognition, including “Best Jazz Recording 2004” for her “Special Angel” duo with legendary guitarist Sonny Greenwich. She produced the first contemporary jazz recording in Cuba , playing her own compositions with greats Dafnis Prieto, Yosvanny Terry, and Jane Bunnett (on the Jazz Focus label). Lerner's work spans the worlds of jazz, creative improvisation, klezmer, and 20 th century classical music. She composes for film, theatre, radio and television. Along with her innovative solo piano work, she tours with the Queen Mab Trio (with Lori Freedman and Ig Henneman), Sonny Greenwich, Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, and has appeared with Tito Puente, Steve Lacy, David Wall, Alicia Svigals, Adrienne Cooper, and Frank London. A prolific recording artist, recent work includes Luminance (Ambiences Magnetiques), solo piano, Special Angel (C.B.C. records), with guitar legend Sonny Greenwich, and, with singer David Wall, Still Soft Voiced Heart (Traditional Crossroads), original settings of contemporary Yiddish poetry. Her original music has garnered the Montreal International Jazz Festival award for best composition. Lerner conducts workshops on improvisation and on Jewish music throughout North America , Europe and the former Soviet Union . Current commissions include a jazz/classical crossover project, creating improvisations on the work of Eric Satie and silent film scores for Dreyer's Joan of Arc (1927) and the Yiddish classic, East and West (1923).

Trumpeter/composer Frank London is a member of the Hasidic New Wave, has performed with John Zorn, LL Cool J, Mel Torme, Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Jane Siberry, Ben Folds 5, Mark Ribot, Maurice El Medioni and Gal Costa, and is featured on over 100 CDs. His own recordings include Invocations (cantorial music); Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars' Di Shikere Kapelye and Brotherhood of Brass; Nigunim and The Zmiros Project (Jewish mystical songs, with Klezmatics vocalist Lorin Sklamberg); The Debt (film and theater music); The Shekhina Big Band ; the soundtrack to The Shvitz ; and four with the Hasidic New Wave. His projects include the folk-opera A Night in the Old Marketplace (based on Y.L. Peretz's Bay nakht oyfn altn mark), Davenen for Pilobolus and the Klezmatics, Great Small Works' The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln and Min Tanaka's Romance . He composed music for John Sayles' The Brother From Another Planet , Yvonne Rainer's Murder and Murder , the Czech-American Marionette Theater's Golem and Tamar Rogoff's Ivye Project . He was music director for David Byrne and Robert Wilson's The Knee Plays , collaborated with Palestinian violinist Simon Shaheen, taught Jewish music in Canada , Crimea and the Catskills, and produced a CD by Gypsy star Esma Redzepova. He has been featured on HBO's Sex and the City , at the North Sea Jazz Festival and the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, and was a co-founder of Les Miserables Brass Band and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.

Lorin Sklamberg is a founding member of the Klezmatics (lead vocals/accordion), with whom he has recorded and traveled the world since 1986, and currently serves as the Sound Archivist of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he previously worked for seven years as Yiddish typesetter and publications designer. He can be heard on some 50 cds, including Live in the Fiddler's House (EMI), on which he duets on his composition, Nign , with violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman. He has composed and performed for film, dance, stage and circus, produced recordings (most recently the cast cd for the New York-based Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre's Kids and Yiddish , and teaches and lectures from London and Paris to Kiev and St. Petersburg . He and Frank London perform concerts of Hasidic “spirituals,” both of which have been recorded: Nigunim with jazz pianist Uri Caine (Tzadik) and The Zmiros Project with multi-instrumentalist Rob Schwimmer (Traditional Crossroads). His other current project is Esn: Songs from the Kitchen , a celebration of Jewish food combining singing and cooking created and performed with Frank London and Adrienne Cooper. Lorin co-founded the New York-based non-profit organization Living Traditions and coordinated its event, KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program (the major instructional institution for klezmer musicians worldwide) for 14 years. He lives in Brooklyn with Michael, his partner of nine years, with whom he is co-parenting three kids (don't ask).