DUBLIN KLEZFEST! '08



@ST. ANDREW'S LANE THEATRE
THURSDAY 27TH NOVEMBER

WORKSHOPS 4-6PM
PERFORMANCES 7.30 – LATE

TICKETS €19.50/17.50


Following on from its massive success in April '07, Dublin Klezfest! returns with an even bigger and better programme, featuring a variety of educational workshops, presentations and live performances from some of the world's leading exponents of klezmer music.

The Klezfest has taken place in many other cities around the world, including New York, London and St. Petersburg, Kiev and Toronto. It celebrates the instrumental music of the Jewish people of Eastern Europe; a form that has had a major worldwide revival at several points in the last two centuries, with the present decade no exception.



At the heart of the Irish extravaganza is the clarinettist Merlin Shepherd and singer Polina Shepherd. Long-standing collaborators with most of the music world's most important klezmer ensembles and individuals, the pair have an immense knowledge of the music and will be giving two free workshops to the public at 4pm and 5pm, in 'niggunim' (wordless sung prayer melodies) and 'make your instrument sing in yiddish' examining the connections between the voice and the instrument. They will also perform as the 'Sound and Light Cinematic Duo' where they will debut their soundtrack to a collection of rare silent film footage of the Jewish community's ritual life in the Ukraine at the turn of the century, performing the songs that would have accompanied such scenes at that time.


Augmented by several of London's foremost klezmorim (members of Shekoyokh and Bucimis) Dublin-based Yurodny will be a full 13-piece orchestra for the event, before the North Strand Kontra band return to some of their early klezmer roots material and also perform new pieces for the occasion.