Alicia Svigals, a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, is a composer, vocalist and the world’s foremost klezmer violinist. She was an NEA MacDowell Fellow in 2014, an honor for first-time fellows of “extraordinary talent.” She was also a 2014 fellow at LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture in NYC, and received the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s 2013 New Jewish Culture Network commission for her original score to the 1918 silent Pola Negri film The Yellow Ticket.
Svigals has played with and composed for violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, the late poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman, Avraham Fried, singer/songwriters Diane Birch, Gary Lucas and Najma Akhtar, and many others. She has appeared on David Letterman, MTV, PBS’ Great Performances, NPR’s Prairie Home Companion, Weekend Edition and New Sounds, and on the soundtrack for the L-Word. In Svigals’ band the Klezmatics, she created contemporary Jewish music that combined the Yiddish tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and progressive worldview. She co-led and toured with the band for seventeen years, recording albums which reached the top ten of the world music charts.
Location: Dante Park Main Stage – Broadway between 63rd & 64th Streets
Time: TBD