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The Stranniki in Berkeley, CA.
February 4 @ 18:00 - 20:00 PST
25 January – 4 February 2025. The Stranniki USA tour dates
25 January – Washington DC. Private club BardElEuro – 4005 Lawrence ave, Kensington, MD20895. Doors – 6.45pm, concert starts – 7.15pm. More here.
26 January – Philadelphia, PA.
Sweeney’s Station Saloon 13639 Philmont Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19116. Concert – 6pm. Read more and book here. Please note venue change.
28 January – New York, NY. CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Elebash Recitall Hall is located on the first floor of the CUNY Graduate Center, to the left past the security desk. 7-9pm. Register here.
30 January – San Diego, CA. Organised by the Institute of Arts & Humanities, University of San Diego. Venue – Hillel of San Diego in La Jolla. 4 p.m. More here. Book here.
31 January – Los Angeles, CA. House concert at Casa Masha in Encino, doors – 7pm, concert – 8pm. Get in touch for details.
1 February – San Diego, CA. House concert at 8512 Donaker Street, San Diego, CA 92129. Doors – 7pm, concert – 8pm. See event page here and Facebook event (in Russian) here. Get in touch for details.
2 February – Mountain View, CA. Samovar Hall. 1077 Independence Ave, Mountain View, CA 94043, Doors – 6pm. Read more and book here
4 February – Berkeley, CA. The Magnes Museum of Jewish Art and Life. Concert – 6pm. Register here.
The Stranniki is a collaborative project of Polina Shepherd and Psoy Korolenko, two multilingual, cross-genre artists and authors, prominent in the Yiddish music scene for over two decades. Soon after their initial mini-tour and presentation at the conference “Mediating a New Cold War in the Digital Age” at Dartmouth College (2016), the duo embarked on a cross-US tour, followed by more international concerts. Central to their repertoire is the concept of a wanderer, and the associated archetype of “road/path”. The Stranniki draw upon, feature, and fuse elements of poetry and songs from Yiddish and Russian literature, folklore, and popular culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, organically weaving in their own original material. Their first mutual album unveils a distinctive continuity of texts, melodies, paths, and destinies, inspiring and informing in the peculiar 2020s as much as it ever has—if not more so.
Sponsors:
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
Berkeley’s Center for Jewish Studies
Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Psoy Korolenko (Pavel Lion) is a multilingual singer-songwriter, translator, journalist and scholar, currently a Visiting Lecturer at Dartmouth College. He is a former scholar/artist-in-residence at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and Dickinson College. He has released numerous albums, both solo and in collaboration, as well as several books of essays, lyrics and translations. His style blends Soviet urban folk, guitar poetry, Yiddish theater songs, French chanson, Tropicalia and more. A Recording Academy voting member, Psoy co-organizes the international festival of music and arts JetLAG in NY state and co-created the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory, a project reviving lost WWII-era Yiddish songs from Ukraine in collaboration with the historian Anna Shternshis, Professor of Yiddish Studies at the University of Toronto.
Polina Shepherd is a Siberian-born, UK-based composer, singer, choir leader and educator, specializing in Yiddish and Russian music. Her unique style blends East European Jewish, Slavic and Turkic influences. She has collaborated with her husband, klezmer clarinetist and band leader Merlin Shepherd, Lorin Sklamberg of The Klezmatics and Psoy Korolenko, among others. She has served as program director for many festivals, including the large pandemic-time online project Step Forverts, featuring over 50 artists from around the world. She also co-produced Undzer Yiddishkayt, a collection of new songs by Eurasian klezmer artists. Polina is the artistic director of the Caravan Orchestra, a German-Israeli/Palestinian youth collaboration. Her work spans choral direction, improvisation and theatre, advancing Jewish music worldwide.
