KlezKanada () is a Canadian organization for the promotion of

klezmer Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...

music and

Yiddish culture Yiddishkeit ( yi, ייִדישקייט ) literally means "Jewishness", i.e. "a Jewish way of life". It can refer to Judaism or forms of Orthodox Judaism when used by religious or Orthodox Jews. In a more general sense, it has come to mean the "Je ...

. Its principal program is a week-long

Jewish music Jewish music is the music and melodies of the Jewish people. There exist both traditions of religious music, as sung at the synagogue and domestic prayers, and of secular music, such as klezmer. While some elements of Jewish music may originat ...

festival founded in 1996 that takes place annually in August at Camp B'nai B'rith in

Lantier, Quebec Lantier is a village and municipality in the Laurentides region of Quebec, Canada, part of the Les Laurentides Regional County Municipality. Demographics Population trend: * Population in 2011: 828 (2006 to 2011 population change: 0.4%) * Populat ...

(north of

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

). The organization also hosts workshops, concerts, and other educational programs in Montreal throughout the year.

History

KlezKanada was founded by a group of local cultural activists led by Hy and Sandy Goldman in 1996. In its first year its festival had roughly 300 participants. It was inspired by

KlezKamp KlezKamp was a yearly Klezmer music and Yiddish culture festival in New York State. Produced by ethnomusicologist and award-winning record and radio producer Henry Sapoznik from 1985 - 2015, the program created an innovative and intensive environm ...

, a similar festival in

New York State New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...

which had been founded a few years earlier. By the late 1990s KlezKanada had grown in size and began attracting many of the top musicians in the field, as well as offering a scholarship program for young musicians. In an article on klezmer, Mike Anklewicz noted the development of the festival: The camp is based around courses and lectures during the day (relating to

klezmer music Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

, and other topics) and concerts at night. In 2001, "of the estival's37 teaching and performance staff, 22 were

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

-based." Since then, the festival faculty has become more diverse: in 2018, fewer than half of the teaching faculty were American, while over a third came from Canada, and the rest from other countries, including

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

Past participants

Adeena Karasick Adeena Karasick (born June 1, 1965) is a Canadian poet, performance artist, and essayist. Born in Winnipeg of Russian Jewish heritage, she has authored several books of poetry and poetic theory, as well as a series of parodic videopoems, such as t ...

Adrienne Cooper Adrienne Cooper (September 1, 1946 – December 25, 2011) was a Yiddish singer, musician and activist who was integral to the contemporary revival of klezmer music. In addition to her work as a Yiddish singer she was the assistant director at ...

Alan Bern Alan Bern (Bloomington, Indiana, 1955) is an American Jewish composer, pianist, accordionist, educator and cultural activist, based in Berlin since 1987. He is the founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy (OM ...

Alicia Svigals Alicia Svigals (born January 8, 1963) is an American violinist and composer. A co-founder of the Grammy-winning band The Klezmatics, she is considered by many to be the world's foremost living klezmer fiddler. Early life Alicia Svigals, violinis ...

Anthony Coleman Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on '' Cobra'', ''Kristallnacht'', ''The Big Gundown'', ''Archery'', and ''Spillane'' and helped push modern Jewish music in ...

* Anthony Russell * Beyond the Pale *

Brave Old World Brave Old World is an American and German klezmer band. It formed in 1989. Members hail from the US and Germany. ''The Washington Post'' called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup. Every player is a virtuoso.” In 1992, the group w ...

César Lerner César Lerner is a film composer. He works in the cinema of Argentina. César Lerner frequently collaborates and performs with Marcelo Moguilevsky. Based in Buenos Aires the ''Lerner Moguilevsky Dúo'' plays jazz- and tango-influenced klezm ...

* Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird *

Elaine Hoffman Watts Elaine Hoffman Watts (May 25, 1932 – September 25, 2017) was a klezmer drummer from Philadelphia, United States. She came from a line of klezmer musicians from what is now Ukraine and was the daughter of Jacob Hoffman, a klezmer xylophone pl ...

Flory Jagoda Flory Jagoda (born Flora Papo; December 21, 1923January 29, 2021) was a Bosnian Jewishborn American guitarist, composer and singer-songwriter. She was known for her composition and interpretation of Sephardic songs, Judeo-Espanyol (Ladino) song ...

Frank London Frank London (born 1958 in New York) is an American klezmer trumpeter who also plays jazz and world music. Early life London was born to a Reform Jewish family and grew up in New York and Connecticut. He started playing the trumpet in fourth g ...

Geoff Berner Geoff Berner (born 1971) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and musician from Vancouver. Musical career Berner originally studied piano in his youth. At a party, somebody asked him why he did not play the accordion. As a result, he began learni ...

* German Goldenshteyn *

Hankus Netsky Hankus Netsky (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 1955) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He chairs the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory. Netsky is founder and di ...

Henry Sapoznik Henry "Hank" Sapoznik ( yi, העניק סאַפאַזשניק; born 1953, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author, record and radio producer and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. Career With MacArthur Fellow David Isay, ...

The Klezmatics The Klezmatics are an American klezmer music group based in New York City, who have achieved fame singing in several languages, most notably mixing older Yiddish tunes with other types of more contemporary music of differing origins. They have ...

Klezmer Conservatory Band The Klezmer Conservatory Band is a Boston-based group which performs traditional klezmer music; it was formed by Hankus Netsky of the New England Conservatory of Music in 1980. Originally formed for a single concert, they have gone on to release el ...

Lisa Gutkin Lisa Gutkin is an American violinist, singer and songwriter of The Klezmatics. She played in Sting's The Last Ship, had a cameo appearance in “Sex and the City,” and is a MacDowell Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. Lisa appears on hundreds of r ...

Margot Leverett Margot Leverett is a New York City, New York-based clarinettist. Born in Ohio, she lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York before studying at Indiana University School of Music. At Indiana, she was classically trained.

Mark Slobin Mark Slobin is an American scholar and ethnomusicologist who has written extensively on the subject of East European Jewish music and klezmer music, as well as the music of Afghanistan, where he conducted research beginning in 1967. He is Winsl ...

Michael Alpert Michael Alpert (born 1954, Los Angeles, California) is a klezmer musician and Yiddish singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, scholar and educator who has been called a key figure in the klezmer revitalization, beginning in the 1970s. He has ...

* Michael Steinlauf *

Michael Wex Michael Wex (born September 12, 1954) is a Canadian novelist, playwright, translator, lecturer, performer, and author of books on language and literature.Nahma Sandrow Nahma Sandrow is a scholar of theater and cultural history,Freedman, Samuel G. (December 3, 1984).A Goldfadn Hit of 1880 Is Reborn Off Broadway. ''New York Times''. Retrieved 2016-12-28. and author of the books ''Vagabond Stars: A World History ...

* Pete Rushefsky *

Socalled Joshua Dolgin (born December 28, 1976), better known by his stage name Socalled, is a Canadian rapper and record producer, known for his eclectic mix of hip hop, klezmer, and other styles such as drum & bass and folk music. A pianist and accordi ...

* Stuart Brotman *

Tamara Brooks Tamara Brooks (11 September 1941 – 19 May 2012) was an American choral conductor. Biography Brooks studied at the Juilliard School of Music, where she received degrees in piano (studying under Eduard Steuermann) and in conducting. She went ...

Theodore Bikel Theodore Meir Bikel ( ; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He appeared in films, including '' The African Queen'' (1951), ''Moulin Rouge'' (1952), ' ...

Veretski Pass Veretskyi Pass or Verecke Pass ( uk, Вере́цький перевал, translit=Veretskyi pereval, more formally: uk, перевал Середньоверецький, translit=pereval Serednoveretskyi, label=none, also known as: uk, В� ...

* Yaëla Hertz

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite news, url=http://www.jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/nov13/archives13nov01-12.html, title=Toast 18 years of KlezKanada, date=1 November 2013, first=Celia, last=Brauer , access-date=6 January 2021, location=Vancouver, newspaper=The Jewish Independent

External links

Official website
1996 establishments in Quebec Ashkenazi Jewish culture in Quebec Jewish music festivals Jewish organizations established in 1996 Klezmer Music festivals in Quebec Music festivals established in 1996 Summer festivals Yiddish culture in Canada