Yiddish singer Susan Leviton will give a concert at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 8, at the St. Croix Reformed Church.
Susan Leviton, one of only a handful of people today exploring and sharing the tradition of women’s a cappella singing in Yiddish, was not always a big supporter of all things Yiddish. In fact, singing Yiddish was pretty much off her radar screen until she moved to Harrisburg, Penn., in 1984. What changed in Harrisburg was that she heard the Old World Folk Band, an instrumental group playing Klezmer (Eastern European Jewish music), and soon became its vocalist.
Performing over the years with the Old World Folk Band and other instrumentalists, and as a solo vocalist, Leviton says she has found that no matter how removed audience members may be from Jewish culture and Yiddish song, the material’s message and beauty bridge gaps when she does her job of thoroughly understanding and then communicating each word of a lyric and the emotional connections the words create.
Click this link for some samples of Susan Leviton’s work. http://susanlevitonarts.com/yiddish-music/music-samples/
