Polina Shepherd

Yiddish Song Brushstrokes. Online. 4
2025-11-26 13:00 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | Online
Yiddish Song Brushstrokes.
A mini course (five sessions) for The Workers Circle.
BOOK HERE

Wednesday 1:30 – 3:00 PM ET: Oct. 29, Nov. 12, 19, 26, Dec. 3

This class invites you to sing Yiddish songs that paint vivid pictures—like the graceful flight of the Golden Peacock, the twinkling stars above, the lush green gardens of our childhood days. Picture the cozy shtetl streets, with their charming, weathered houses, all woven into the fabric of these melodies.
This course is a warm invitation to share in the joy of these timeless tunes. We’ll chat about the different styles and colors of the music, and most importantly, we’ll sing together, letting the spirit of the songs fill the air.
All are welcome to join. We will learn both by ear and with sheet music, discuss style, theory and history of the songs and sing, sing, sing…

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Yuletide concert. Slavic Voices. Lewes, UK
2025-11-29 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Church of St John sub Castr, Abinger Place, Lewes, BN7 2QA, United Kingdom
Join us for a captivating Yuletide concert by Slavic Voices London & Brighton choir presenting rich musical traditions of the Slavic world in a festive programme.
BOOK HERE
Hear Orthodox chants, iconic classics by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Schnittke, refined Art songs and gritty folklore from the far corners of Siberia to the banks of the Black Sea. The choir’s repertoire is sung mainly in Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Belorussian, sometimes even Yiddish or Romanian.
Slavic Voices perform in a way that is rarely encountered in the choral world. There is freedom and spontaneity in their approach to folklore as well as precision and deep focus in their classical repertoire, performed with great attention to cultural context, history and style.
The choir opened in September 2023 and now has around 90 singers coming from many cultural backgrounds. They have performed joint concerts with a Macedonian Folk Duo Filip Arilon and Stojan Stojanov (Macedonia), Maspindzeli Georgian choir (London), Heartwood Chorus in Bristol, Bulgarian dance group Vezanitsa (Brighton) and even collaborated with a UK Klezmer-Punk Carnival Chaos Band Buffo’s Wake. The non-auditioned choir warmly welcomes new singers and aims to share their music through concerts across England, with their most recent performance held at the iconic St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol.
Led by Polina Skovoroda-Shepherd, granddaughter of a Cossack, an internationally acclaimed performer, educator and cultural activist.
Organised by Lewes Live Literature, www.leweslivelit.co.uk. LLL is a promoter of art and literature events, running spring and autumn seasons and one-off events, with a reputation for inventive, eclectic programming.
This Yuletide concert in Lewes promises to be an enchanting evening, celebrating the essence of Slavic culture through music that transcends borders.
“A mesmerising sonic journey through Eastern Europe’s rich musical heritage, the concert was a vibrant blend of heart-warming, uplifting, and classical tunes. Every singer poured their soul into the performance, creating an unforgettable experience. At the heart of it all, Polina’s brilliance and passion drive this exceptional ensemble, turning music into pure joy for both performers and audience alike.” – G.S, audience member in Brighton, March 2025.
“In the current geo-political climate, culture and humanity are more important than ever, and these are qualities close to the heart of Polina Shepherd…I highly recommend the choir to anyone with the slightest interest in music.” – DG, audience member in London, February 2025
“I was totally captivated by the harmonies and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. I was particularly taken with Polina’s style of conducting which I felt drew the audience deeper into the music. An absolute pleasure to listen to.” – L.R, audience member in Brighton, March 2025.
“‘A beautiful mix of voices, uplifting harmonies and moving Slavic melancholy.” – audience member in London, February 2025.
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BBC Radio 3. The Russia I Lost.
2025-11-30 19:15 - 20:00 UTC | Online
Listen to the show here. This programme will be also available shortly after broadcast.
Having left Russia perhaps for the last time, Tatyana Movshevich strives to define her Russian-ness for her children, by reaching back through poetry and music and family narrative, to an unwitnessed past. A rediscovery and a rewriting of her cultural story.
Cast
Vasily ….. Joel MacCormack
Klavdiya ….. Rhiannon Neads
Moisei ….. Daniel Rabin
Lydia ….. Dorothea Myer-Bennett
Lieutenant ….. Greg Kolpakchi
Tanya ….. Liza Moody
Singer ….. Polina Shepherd
Director, Jessica Dromgoole
Sound, Pete Ringrose
Producer, Monica Whitlock
Writer, Tatyana Movshevich
Thanks to Justus van de Kamp, Karen Polak, Itzik Gottesman, Donald Rayfield
and Anna Pilkington.
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Yiddish Song Brushstrokes. Online. 5
2025-12-03 13:00 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | Online

Christmas concerts with Söngfjelagið. Reykjavik. Iceland.
2025-12-07 | Langholtskirkja, Sólheimum 13-15, Reykjavik, 104, Iceland
For the forth time Polina will be working with a Reykjavik choir Söngfjelagið .
There will be two concerts on the day, 16.00 and 20.00
BOOK HERE

Read more here – in Icelandic.
Söngfjelagið is a mixed choir that was founded in the fall of 2011 and has long been known in the musical scene of the capital of Iceland. Regular items on the choir’s program are the annual Advent concert, where a new work written especially for the choir is always premiered, and the summer celebration in Iðnó on the last day of winter. In between, the choir performs jazz, klezmer, folk songs and whatever the spirit inspires the choir. However, one thing can always be said for sure; the joy of singing is paramount.
The choir was formed due to the group’s interest in performing high-quality choral music under the direction of Hilmar Arnar Agnarsson, who is among the most experienced and leading choir directors in the country and has received international attention and recognition with the Southern Iceland Chamber Choir.
Icelandic info:
Jólatónleikar Söngfjelagsins eru fyrir löngu orðnir fastur liður hjá fjölmörgum á aðventunni. Hilmar Örn Agnarsson er stofnandi og stjórnandi kórsins frá upphafi en tónleikarnir í ár verða sérstakir að því leyti að þeir verða kveðjutónleikar hans með Söngfjelaginu. Að þessu tilefni flytur kórinn úrval af jólalögum Söngfjelagsins, en það eru lög og verk sem samin hafa verið sérstaklega fyrir kórinn af ýmsum tónskáldum og textahöfundum, eitt á ári hverju allt frá stofnun hans haustið 2011. Flutt verða m.a. verk eftir Hjörleif Hjartarson, Daníel Þorsteinsson, Úlfar Inga Haraldsson, Olgu Guðrúnu Árnadóttur, Georg Kára Hilmarsson og Hróðmar Sigurbjörnsson.
Í ár verður frumflutt Jólalag Söngfjelagsins 2025, Stundvísu jól, eftir Karl Ágúst Úlfsson, sem er meðlimur í Söngfjelaginu. Sérlegur útsetjari Söngfjelagsins í gegnum tíðina er Haraldur V. Sveinbjörnsson. Með kórnum leikur hljómsveit Kjartans Valdemarssonar ásamt strengjasveit Hjörleifs Valssonar.
Sérstakir gestir verða Björg Þórhallsdóttir og Pálmi Gunnarsson ásamt hinni heimsþekktu Polinu Shepherd, þjóðlaga- og Klezmersöngkonu.
Sem fyrr munu gleði, kærleikur og friður svífa yfir vötnum á þessari uppskeruhátíð Söngfjelagsins og kórstjórans, sem líta yfir farinn veg og fagna frjóu og góðu samstarfi.
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Slavic Voices at King's College Chapel, London.
2025-12-10 19:00 - 21:30 UTC | King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
Pre-Christmas concert at King’s College London Chapel
BOOK HERE
Join us on the journey to explore and share the culturally unique and musically diverse repertoire of the wide Slavic world and beyond: Orthodox chants, beautiful classics by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Schnittke and others, refined XVIII-XIX centuries Art songs and gritty folklore from the far corners of Siberia to the banks of the Black Sea.
The repertoire of Slavic Voices London & Brighton choir is sung in Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Belorussian, sometimes even Yiddish or Romanian. Slavic Voices perform in a way that is rarely encountered in the choral world. There is freedom and spontaneity in their approach to folklore as well as precision and deep focus in their classical repertoire, presented with great attention to cultural context, history and style.
The choir opened in September 2023 and now has around 90 singers coming from many cultural backgrounds. They have performed joint concerts with a Macedonian Folk Duo Filip Arilon and Stojan Stojanov (Macedonia), Maspindzeli Georgian choir (London), Heartwood Chorus in Bristol, Bulgarian dance group Vezanitsa (Brighton) and even collaborated with a UK Klezmer-Punk Carnival Chaos Band Buffo’s Wake.
The non-auditioned choir warmly welcomes new singers and aims to share their music through concerts across England, with their most recent performance held at the iconic St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. Led by Polina Skovoroda-Shepherd, granddaughter of a Cossack, an internationally acclaimed performer, educator and cultural activist.
This pre-Christmas concert in London promises to be an enchanting evening, celebrating the essence of Slavic culture through music that transcends borders.

– A mesmerising sonic journey through Eastern Europe’s rich musical heritage, the concert was a vibrant blend of heart-warming, uplifting, and classical tunes. Every singer poured their soul into the performance, creating an unforgettable experience. At the heart of it all, Polina’s brilliance and passion drive this exceptional ensemble, turning music into pure joy for both performers and audience alike.
G.S, audience member in Brighton, March 2025.

– In the current geo-political climate, culture and humanity are more important than ever, and these are qualities close to the heart of Polina Shepherd…I highly recommend the choir to anyone with the slightest interest in music.
DG, audience member in London, February 2025

– I was totally captivated by the harmonies and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. I was particularly taken with Polina’s style of conducting which I felt drew the audience deeper into the music. An absolute pleasure to listen to.”
L.R, audience member in Brighton, March 2025.

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More information about Slavic Voices here.

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The Stranniki in Cleveland, OH, USA.
2026-01-17 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | East Sussex
7pm. House concert at 31200 Ainsworth Drive.
To book, please email cleveconcert@gmail.com or sms on +2163964509.
The Stranniki is a collaborative project by Psoy Korolenko and Polina Shepherd, two multilingual, cross-genre artists and authors, prominent in the Yiddish music scene for over two decades.
Following their initial mini-tour and presentation at the Mediating a New Cold War in the Digital Age conference at Dartmouth College in 2015, the duo embarked on a US tour in 2016, which was succeeded by more international concerts in 2018, including the JetLAG Festival, featuring the program Schlepping the Steppes and the Shtetl. Central to this repertoire is the concept of the ‘strannik’ (wanderer; literally ‘wandering stranger, strange-nik’), roughly translatable into Yiddish as ‘navenadnik’ (vagabond), and the associated archetype of ‘doroga’ (Russian for road, path). The Stranniki draw upon, feature, and/or fuse elements of poetry and songs from Yiddish and Russian literature, folklore and popular culture of 19 and 20 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.
PSOY KOROLENKO (vocals & some piano): Pavel Lion, a.k.a. Psoy Korolenko, is a Moscow based singer/songwriter, translator, scholar and journalist. Picture a jetlagged Allen Ginsberg hopped up on a double espresso: a polyglot people-pleaser, a born performer, a half-serious shaman…. a practitioner of what he calls “spell art,” which is to say art that casts a spell on its befuddled, bemused, blissed-out audience. (“Forward”). He has been referred to as a ”wandering scholar” and an ”avant-bard”. His multilingual one-person cabaret-esque show balances folk and klezmer music, free-style poetry and intellectual comedy. Psoy writes and sings in English, Russian, Yiddish, and French. On stage since 2000, he has published one book of selected essays and song lyrics ”The Hit Of The Century”, and 14 CDs – some of them in collaboration with active Jewish and Klezmer musicians (“Opa!”, Daniel Kahn, Igor Krutogolov, “Oy Division”). Psoy is a member of the organizing committee for a Russian American music festival JetLAG, a guest of many klezmer music festivals, and an ex-artist in residence at the Trinity College (Hartford), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA). An author of insightful and sophisticated Russian sung poetry, Psoy is also known for his keen and explorative vision of the art of translation, “tradaptation” and what he calls Spell-Art (i.e. playing with foreign text, emphasizing linguistic distances, multilingual songs etc).
POLINA SHEPHERD (vocals, piano): “The Robert Plant of klezmer” (Seth Rogovoy, The Essential Klezmer), performs an explosive mixture of songs of the Steppes and the Shtetl spiced up by Tatar Bazaars and washed down with an Odessa fisherman’s tune: Russian and Yiddish, folklore and fakelore, the powerful and the profound.
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The Stranniki in Wheeling (Chicago), USA
2026-01-18 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Chicago) | KRUG, 1400 S Wolf Rd Ste 100, Wheeling, IL, 60090
BOOK HERE
The Stranniki is a collaborative project by Psoy Korolenko and Polina Shepherd, two multilingual, cross-genre artists and authors, prominent in the Yiddish music scene for over two decades. Following their initial mini-tour and presentation at the Mediating a New Cold War in the Digital Age conference at Dartmouth College in 2015, the duo embarked on a US tour in 2016, which was succeeded by more international concerts in 2018, including the JetLAG Festival, featuring the program Schlepping the Steppes and the Shtetl. Central to this repertoire is the concept of the ‘strannik’ (wanderer; literally ‘wandering stranger, strange-nik’), roughly translatable into Yiddish as ‘navenadnik’ (vagabond), and the associated archetype of ‘doroga’ (Russian for road, path). The Stranniki draw upon, feature, and/or fuse elements of poetry and songs from Yiddish and Russian literature, folklore and popular culture of 19 and 20 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.
PSOY KOROLENKO (vocals & some piano): Pavel Lion, a.k.a. Psoy Korolenko, is a Moscow based singer/songwriter, translator, scholar and journalist. Picture a jetlagged Allen Ginsberg hopped up on a double espresso: a polyglot people-pleaser, a born performer, a half-serious shaman…. a practitioner of what he calls “spell art,” which is to say art that casts a spell on its befuddled, bemused, blissed-out audience. (“Forward”). He has been referred to as a ”wandering scholar” and an ”avant-bard”. His multilingual one-person cabaret-esque show balances folk and klezmer music, free-style poetry and intellectual comedy. Psoy writes and sings in English, Russian, Yiddish, and French. On stage since 2000, he has published one book of selected essays and song lyrics ”The Hit Of The Century”, and 14 CDs – some of them in collaboration with active Jewish and Klezmer musicians (“Opa!”, Daniel Kahn, Igor Krutogolov, “Oy Division”). Psoy is a member of the organizing committee for a Russian American music festival JetLAG, a guest of many klezmer music festivals, and an ex-artist in residence at the Trinity College (Hartford), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA). An author of insightful and sophisticated Russian sung poetry, Psoy is also known for his keen and explorative vision of the art of translation, “tradaptation” and what he calls Spell-Art (i.e. playing with foreign text, emphasizing linguistic distances, multilingual songs etc).

POLINA SHEPHERD (vocals, piano): “The Robert Plant of klezmer” (Seth Rogovoy, The Essential Klezmer), performs an explosive mixture of songs of the Steppes and the Shtetl spiced up by Tatar Bazaars and washed down with an Odessa fisherman’s tune: Russian and Yiddish, folklore and fakelore, the powerful and the profound.
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The Stranniki in Minneapolis, MN, USA.
2026-01-21 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | The Museum of Russian Art, 5500 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, MN 55419, United States
Presented in partnership by The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) and KAMIN. In collaboration with Ilana Volodarsky and RAJMN (Russian-American Jews in Minnesota)
BOOK HERE
Join Psoy Korolenko and Polina Shepherd, two genre-defying, multilingual powerhouses of Yiddish and Russian music, for an unforgettable evening of song, poetry, and spellbinding storytelling.
Performing together as The Stranniki (“Wanderers”), this dynamic duo weaves together 19th–20th century folklore, literature, and original compositions that traverse themes of travel, identity, and cultural fusion. Their performances shimmer with humor, heart, and hypnotic harmonies.
Psoy Korolenko, once Moscow’s “avant-bard” (now based in New Jersey), is a one-man cabaret of klezmer, freestyle poetry, and intellectual comedy. Think Ginsberg meets Gogol with a keyboard. Polina Shepherd, often called “the Robert Plant of klezmer,” channels the Steppes, the Shtetl, and everything in between – raw, radiant, and deeply rooted.
From JetLAG Music Festival to international stages, The Stranniki bring their acclaimed programme and electrifying presence to life.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026Concert: 7:00 PM | Doors Open: 6:30 PMThe Museum of Russian Art – Main Gallery
All galleries and TMORA Shop will be open prior to the concert for your enjoyment.
Tickets $25 TMORA Members | $30 General Admission | $35 Day of Show (if available)

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The Stranniki in Portland, OR
2026-01-23 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Denver) | Eastside Jewish Commons, 2420 NE Sandy Blv, Portland, 97232, United States
BOOK HERE
The Stranniki (The Wanderers) is a collaboration between Polina Shepherd and Psoy Korolenko, renowned multilingual artists in the Yiddish music scene for over two decades. Together, they have toured the U.S. and internationally, performing programs such as “Schlepping the Steppes and the Shtetl.” Their work centers on the themes of the wanderer and the road as a path, blending Yiddish and Russian poetry, folklore, and music from the 19th and 20th centuries with their own compositions. The project reveals a unique continuity of texts, melodies, roads, and destinies—still inspiring and meaningful today, perhaps more than ever.
All Ages $25 Adv/$30 Door
Polina Shepherd, a Siberia-born, UK-based composer and singer, specializes in Yiddish and Russian music, blending East European Jewish, Slavic, and Turkic influences. She has collaborated with artists such as Merlin Shepherd, Lorin Sklamberg, and Psoy Korolenko. During the pandemic, she launched the online project Yiddish Song: Step Forverts, featuring Yiddishists from around the world, and co-produced the CD Undzer Yiddishkayt, showcasing new songs by Eurasian artists. Her work spans choral direction, improvisation, and theatre, promoting Jewish music globally.
Psoy Korolenko (Pavel Lion) is a multilingual singer-songwriter, translator, journalist, and scholar, and a Visiting Lecturer at Dartmouth College. A former artist-in-residence at several U.S. universities, he has released numerous albums and books. His eclectic style combines Soviet urban folk, Yiddish theater songs, French chanson, and more. A Recording Academy voting member, he co-organizes the JetLAG Festival in New York and co-created the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory, reviving WWII-era Yiddish songs from Ukraine in collaboration with historian Anna Shternshis.

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Winter Warmer - Music from around the World. Brighton, UK
2026-01-31 12:00 - 16:00 UTC | Jubilee Library, Jubilee Street, Brighton, BN1 1GE
A fantastic line up of music and dance from around the World. Some new acts and some old favourites. Melodies, Songs and Rhythms from Sudan, Zimbabwe, Persia Afghanistan, Kurdistan & Eastern Europe.
Polina Shepherd & Slavic VoicesPeyman Heydarian & Kourosh KouchakpourIsaac JengwaJo EmaBashir Al Gamar.
Free event, open to all
Read full details on Best Foot Music website.

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Icelandic Choir of London and Slavic Voices in Brighton
2026-02-28 14:30 - 16:30 UTC | St Luke’s Church Brighton, Queens Park Rd, Brighton, East Sussex, Queens Park Rd, BrighBN2 9ZB, United Kingdom
Welcome Spring with The Icelandic Choir of London and Slavic Voices
BOOK HERE
Slavic Voices Brighton and London choir will perform a joint concert with the Icelandic Choir of London at St. Luke’s Church. Doors: 2.00pm, concert – 2.30 – 4.30pm.

Songs from thousands of miles away will be brought to your doorstep by two British choirs – The Icelandic Choir of London and Slavic Voices (Brighton and London). Experience compelling and complex repertoire from several musical cultures and styles to welcome this year’s sunshine.
The Icelandic Choir of London (Íslenski Kórinn í London), founded in 1984, performs a varied Nordic programme and travels regularly. The group’s main focus is to perform Icelandic choral music but it also performs folk music, pop music arrangements and other Nordic choral repertoire. The choir has travelled to and performed in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and The Netherlands, as well as London, Manchester, Brighton and Hull. Collaborators include the Reykjavik Chamber Choir, London Nordic Choir, the German Choir of London, Cecil Sharp House Choir, Southbank Centre London, other Icelandic choirs from across Northern Europe and many more. Since 2012 the choir has been directed by Helgi R. Ingvarsson, Icelandic-British composer, teacher and lecturer.
Slavic Voices London & Brighton choir perform in a way that is rarely encountered in the choral world. There is freedom and spontaneity in their approach to folklore as well as precision and deep focus in their classical repertoire, presented with great attention to cultural context, history and style. The choir presents music of all styles from the Slavic world: Orthodox chants, beautiful classics by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and others, refined XVIII-XIX-centuries Art songs and gritty folklore from the far corners of Siberia to the banks of the Black Sea. The repertoire is sung mainly in Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Belorussian, sometimes even Georgian or Romanian. The choir is led by Polina Skovoroda-Shepherd, granddaughter of a Cossack, an internationally acclaimed performer, educator and cultural activist. It was founded in September 2023 and now has around 90 singers with all kinds of backgrounds. SV have performed joint concerts with a Macedonian Folk Duo Filip Arilon and Stojan Stojanov (Macedonia), Maspindzeli Georgian choir (London), Heartwood Chorus in Bristol, Bulgarian dance group Vezanitsa (Brighton) and even collaborated with Buffo’s Wake – a UK Klezmer-Punk Carnival Chaos Band.

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WeltMusik Chorwoche. Germany.
2026-03-06 08:00 - 2026-03-14 17:00 UTC | Tagungshaus Carnap, Pisselberg 14, Dannenberg, 29451, Germany
A residential week of singing and community fun in a rural place in Germany not far from Hamburg with WeltMusik Choir led by Nathaniel Damon and Polina Shepherd.
BOOK HERE
Unterbringung: Die Carnap Tagungshäuser in Pisselberg bei Dannenberg an der Elbe sind wunderschöne alte Bauernhäuser, mit viel Charme und sehr gemütlich. Die meisten Zimmer sind vor allem 2 und 3 Bettzimmer. Einzelzimmer sind mit Aufpreis von 12€ pro Nacht begrenzt vorhanden.
Workshopbeginn: Ankommen am Montag, den 9. März um 11 Uhr, die erste Mahlzeit ist um 13:00, die erste Probe beginnt um 14 Uhr
Workshopende: Samstag ca 20:30 Uhr nach dem Abschlusskonzert (Konzertbeginn 19 Uhr)
Workshop Sprache: vorwiegend Englisch mit punktuelle Übersetzung ins Deutsche bei Nachfragen
Vegetarische Vollverpflegung: wir werden gemeinsam einfache, leckere vegetarische bio Mahlzeiten kochen. Es gibt eine Kerngruppe, die das Kochen organisiert und die Mahlzeiten plant. Jede ist mal dran, zu schnippeln, rühren und im Kochteam mitzuagieren. Es entsteht ein schöner Ausgleich zum Proben und die Gemeinschaft wird gestärkt. Die erste Mahlzeit ist am Montag um 13:00 / Letzte Mahlzeit: Frühstück am Samstag.
Zusätzliche Mahlzeiten: Folgende Mahlzeiten müssen selbst finanziert werden: Samstag Mittagessen/ Abendessen
Adresse: Tagungshaus Carnap, Pisselberg 14, 29451 Dannenberg (Elbe)
Hin/ Ruckfahrt: Das Tagungshaus Carnap ist mit einem Hamburg Ticket zu erreichen. Falls du mit Auto kommen möchtest und Platz hast, andere mitzunehmen oder ein Platz im Auto suchst, kannst du das selbständig organisieren
Zahlung nach Selbsteinschätzung (Sliding Scale): jede Person zahlt nach ihrer Möglichkeit innerhalb einen vorgegebenen Rahmen von 1000€-600€.
Nathaniel Damon – Musik aus aller Welt
Nathaniel Unterrichtet Lieder aus den USA, aus Georgien, Südafrika, dem Balkan, Korsika uvm. Er freut sich, mit euch in den unterschiedlichsten Klängen diesen Traditionen einzusteigen.
Nathaniel Damon stammt aus dem US-Bundesstaat Vermont, wo er als Teenager mit dem Weltmusik Ensemble Village Harmony gesungen hat. Er studierte Gesang an der HfMT in Hamburg und gründete in 2005 den Weltmusik-Chor Hamburg, der sich zurzeit aus 55 Sänger*innen zusammensetzt. Er gibt Chorworkshops zum Thema Improvisation & Weltmusik, begleitet Tanzveranstaltungen als Multi-Instrumentalist & Sänger und komponiert seit 2018 eigene Chormusik. Seine Chorarbeit ist geprägt von seinem inneren Verlangen nach Gemeinschaft und seinen Wunsch, verschiedene Menschen in dieser Gemeinschaft einen Platz zu ermöglichen.
Polina Shepherd – Magical Songs of the East
Polina ist Komponistin, Performerin, Pädagogin und Kulturaktivistin. Sie stammt ursprünglich aus Sibirien und lebt jetzt in Brighton im Vereinigten Königreich. Ihr Gesang basiert auf traditionellen Formen, ist aber tief in der osteuropäischen jüdischen und russischen Folklore verwurzelt. Durch ihr Aufwachsen in Tatarstan kam sie auch der islamischen Ornamentik und Klangfarbe nahe, was in ihrem einzigartigen Gesangsstil zu hören ist.
In Kasan (Hauptstadt von Tatarstan, Zentralrussland) studierte sie an der staatlichen Akademie und schloss sich der ersten Klezmer-Band Russlands nach der Perestroika an, Simcha (1990-2000). Bald wurde sie zur wichtigsten jiddischen Chorleiterin der ehemaligen Sowjetunion, komponierte Originalmaterial für große Stimmgruppen und ging mit ihrem Quartett Ashkenazim (1991-2007) auf internationale Tournee.
Als Solokünstlerin präsentiert sie eine Vielzahl von Liedern, darunter ihr Soloalbum Three Centuries Ago, das zum Teil mit eigenen Gedichten versehen ist. Im Jahr 2023 trat Polina dem GRAMMY®️-prämierten Barockorchester Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland, USA) als Gastsängerin bei der Exile & Resilience-Tournee durch die USA und Europa bei. Neben Dutzenden von Projekten arbeitete sie als Sängerin mit dem Remix-Künstler Max Pashm an Never Mind the Balkans, der rumänischen Roma-Brass-Band Fanfara und zuletzt an der Gecko Theatre-Produktion Kin (2022).
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KlezNorth. Youlgrave, Derbyshire, UK
2026-04-17 - 2026-04-19 | Youlgrave Village Hall, Holywell Lane, Youlgrave, Bakewell, DE45 1UT, United Kingdom
KlezNorth is an annual festival of Klezmer music, dance and song welcoming both Jewish and non-Jewish people to the wonderful world of Klezmer. KlezNorth is based in Derbyshire, but in this context, “North” regularly includes the Midlands, the Southwest, Wales and Scotland, the North East, East Anglia, and, dare we say, London and the South East. We have a few overseas participants as well.
Read more and book here.
Led by brass player Frank London, all the way from the USA, and singer Polina Shepherd we have Gica Loening on fiddle, Avia Moore teaching dance, Sanne Möricke on accordion and the always amazing Michael Alpert.
The full range of workshops and workshop leaders in 2026 will be announced as the programme is finalised.
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Her:Kol – Yiddish Women’s Song Cultures. Weimar. Germany
2026-08-01 - 2026-08-08 | East Sussex
Her:Kol – Yiddish Women’s Song Cultures. New musical settings of Yiddish women’s poetry by contemporary women composer / performers of Yiddish music. This will be part of Yiddish Summer Weimar Festival week. Polina Shepherd will be one of the featured artists. Watch this space for more.
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