Alicia Svigals via Matrix

Alicia Svigals I CURATE

Network Node

Name: Alicia Svigals
City/Place: New York City
Country: United States

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix

Life & Work

Bio: Alicia Svigals, violinist/composer and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, is the world's foremost klezmer fiddler. Alicia almost singlehandedly revived the tradition of klezmer fiddling, which had been on the brink of extinction until she recorded her debut album Fidl in the 1990’s. In February 2018, Svigals and jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer released her newest album, Beregovski Suite, a fantasy on klezmer melodies culled from the archive of early 20th century Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovski.

Svigals is also a composer who works in many genres. She was an NEA MacDowell Fellow in 2014, an honor for first-time fellows of “extraordinary talent.” She is the recipient of the Foundation for Jewish Culture's 2013 New Jewish Culture Network commission for her new live score to the 1918 Pola Negri silent film The Yellow Ticket, which she tours internationally with pianist Marilyn Lerner, and was commissioned to create an expanded version of the score for the Seattle Symphony’s clarinetist Laura DeLuca, premiering in May 2014. She was fellow at LABA: a Laboratory of New Jewish Culture in 2014, where she studied Jewish texts with a multidisciplinary group of fellows and wrote a song cycle for soprano, violin and accordion drawn from that experience. In June 2018, Flicker Alley released her score to the 1923 silent film Das Alte Gesetz, co-written with pianist Donald Sosin, which they are touring internationally.

Svigals has taught and toured with violinist Itzhak Perlman, who recorded her compositions as duets with Ms. Svigals and the Klezmatics; and she was awarded first prize in performance at the Safed, Israel international klezmer festival. She’s been featured in Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues (at Madison Square Garden with Phoebe Snow, Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, and Brooke Shields). She’s composed for the Kronos Quartet, and composer Osvaldo Golijov was commissioned to create a work for her and clarinetist David Krakauer (then a fellow band member in the Klezmatics) entitled Rocketekiya, recorded on the Milken Archives label and performed at Merkin Concert Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

In Svigals' band the Klezmatics, she created contemporary Jewish music that combined the joyous and mystical Yiddish tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and an overtly political worldview. She co-led and toured with the band for seventeen years and recorded albums which reached the top ten of the Billboard and European World Music Charts. They appeared on Prairie Home Companion, Rosie O'Donnell's Kids are Punny, Good Morning America, MTV News, Nickelodeon, the BBC, and NPR's Weekend Edition, and with them she composed music for theater, dance and film, including the score to Tony Kushner's A Dybbuk, first produced at the Public Theater in NY, and his work-in-progress It's an Undoing World, groundbreaking documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand's A Healthy Baby Girl, and for poets Allen Ginsburg (in performance at the first Berlin Jewish Culture Festival) and Israeli singer Chava Alberstein (on her collaboration CD with the Klezmatics, The Well). Alicia’s multi-media event The Third Seder, featuring Tony Kushner and the Klezmatics, was presented by La Mama and by the Jewish Museum in New York, and became the model for Michael Dorf’s Third Seder events. Alicia and the Klezmatics recorded two albums for EMI with violinist Itzhak Perlman, which became the best-selling folk albums of all time. They performed with him on PBS' Emmy-winning In the Fiddler's House and on David Letterman, and appeared with him in concert at Radio City Music Hall, Tanglewood, and Wolf Trap.

Ms. Svigals plays and writes music from heavy metal to traditional Greek, and she's recorded on projects from Lipa Schmeltzer‘s Kol Nidre to the soundtrack for the TV series the L-Word. She wrote and recorded string quartet parts for singer/songwriter Diane Birch’s debut Bible Belt, and appeared playing Indian-style violin on Gary Lucas and Najma Akhtar’s Rishte. She was featured on Herb Alpert’s recording of Belz, arranged by Marvin Hamlisch, on A Jewish Songbook. She’s appeared in stadium shows with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, recorded for John Cale's (Velvet Underground) album Last Day On Earth, and the Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen, and improvised with Marc Ribot and John Zorn, appearing on the Knitting Factory Cobra CD. She composed an Americana soundtrack to Judith Helfand's documentary The Uprising of 1934 with singer Peggy Seeger, arranged string quartets for singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman at Carnegie Hall (released as a live CD), provided original music for choreographers Risa Jaroslow, at Lincoln Center, Naomi Goldberg in L.A. at the Ford Theater, and Diane Germaine at the Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati. She has provided original music for author Thane Rosenbaum’s live readings from his novel Golems of Gotham, and for a theater production with acrobat developed from the novel at the 14th St. Y in NY; two characters in the novel are based on Svigals. She’s featured on Avraham Fried's Avinu Malkeynu. Her album Vodkazak, produced by Chabad rabbi Zalman Goldstein, feature her klezmer interpretations of Hasidic Nigunim and is a rare production from that community featuring a female artist.

Svigals has played with performance artist Taylor Mac in the Yiddish song segment of his 24-hour popular song piece, recorded a klezmer “Three Blind Mice” for the permanent children’s room exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History, played Yiddish baseball songs for Peter Miller’s documentary Jews and Baseball: an American Love Story, performed Ethiopian Jewish-African pop with singer/songwriter Alula, led a giant fiddle string orchestra jam with whiskey on a Manhattan rooftop, recorded with Terry Dame’s funky/modal Monkey on a Rail Orchestra, studied Turkish maqams with Ross Daly, taught Klezmer to top young professional artists in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall residency, performed David Krakauer and SoCalled’s Battleship Potemkin score for sampler, orchestral percussion, clarinet and violin at the Wintergarden Theater, was honored at the Bam Café’s performance evening entitled “Tribute to Alicia Svigals”, curated 60 shows in a month at John Zorn’s venue the Stone, worked tirelessly with Yiddish dancemaster Steve Weintraub to revive old-world klezmer dancing in the Jewish community and led concert/dance parties with him at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Public Library et al; led children’s shows introducing the next generation to Yiddish music and dance, and appeared all over the world with her allfemale band with the late Adrienne Cooper, Mikveh, her roots group Alicia Svigals’ Klezmer Fiddle Express and her Klezmer/new improv duos with pianists Marilyn Lerner (Klezmer Unfettered) and Uli Geissendoerfer. (Klezmer Reimagined) – everywhere from the Cite de la Musique in Paris to Carnegie Hall in New York to the Port Townsend Fiddle Festival.

Svigals also writes and lectures on Jewish music and culture.

Contact Information

Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 1-917-734-0087

Media | Markets

▶ Buy My Music: (downloads/CDs/DVDs) http://store.cdbaby.com/cd/aliciasvigals
▶ Twitter: aliciasvigals
▶ Instagram: svigals
▶ Website: http://aliciasvigals.com
▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UC_4D8Lz6ipHaiMRuIO_AoxA
▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/0Hp7NSJrcvPaFtvXPvJ2Je
▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/0emWCoIUFCEXt5uSqsC4bJ
▶ Article: http://newyorkmusicdaily.wordpress.com/2018/02/04/au/
▶ Article 2: http://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/music-modernizes-silent-film-at-the-ajff/

Clips (more may be added)

Masterclass: Alicia Svigals on klezmer. 1: Running semiquavers
By Alicia Svigals

302 views
Masterclass: Alicia Svigals on klezmer. 2: Playing the zhok
By Alicia Svigals

359 views
Masterclass: Alicia Svigals on klezmer. 3: Krekhts
By Alicia Svigals

446 views

Alicia Svigals Curated

What's Been Happening?

A video was posted re Alicia Svigals:

Masterclass: Alicia Svigals on klezmer. 1: Running semiquavers
Alicia Svigals performs the third section of the traditional song Khsidim Tants, showing how to mix up the different approaches to running semiquavers: very ...
- September 24, 2019
A video was posted re Alicia Svigals:

Masterclass: Alicia Svigals on klezmer. 2: Playing the zhok
The three quavers at the end of the 3/8 zhok (hora) figure are played rushed, followed by a little silence before the down beat comes in again. This happens ...
- September 24, 2019
A video was posted re Alicia Svigals:

Masterclass: Alicia Svigals on klezmer. 3: Krekhts
The krekhts is unique among ornaments -- there is no other tradition in the world with anything similar -- and it is in a way the essence of the klezmer soun...
- September 24, 2019
A category was added to Alicia Svigals:

Writer
- September 24, 2019
A category was added to Alicia Svigals:

Jewish Music
- September 24, 2019
A category was added to Alicia Svigals:

New York City
- September 24, 2019
A category was added to Alicia Svigals:

Composer
- September 24, 2019
A category was added to Alicia Svigals:

Klezmer Fiddle
- September 24, 2019
A category was added to Alicia Svigals:

Violin
- September 24, 2019
Alicia Svigals is matrixed!
- September 24, 2019

em português →

ARE YOU MATRIXED?

"Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
We're touched too Mr Webber! (cello & Brazilian music fan)

"Obrigado!"
✅—Founding Member Darius Mans (economist, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology); president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini (piano, Blue Note recording artist)

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals (klezmer fiddle; founder of The Klezmatics)

"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad (composer & piano; compositions recorded by Yo Yo Ma and played by orchestras around the world)

This is a matrix in the original sense of "source" ("matrix" derives from "mater", Latin for "mother"). The platform was built in Bahia, Brazil in order to provide a means by which Bahian artists could be reached from around the world. But there's a beautiful catch: To work for these people the platform must work for ALL in the global creative economy. It must (work to) create an INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY.
How a) Inside this matrix you have a node (a page) — a calling card to the universe — from which you can curate (recommend) other people in the network, and by which they can recommend you.
How b) In mathematics there is something called "the small world phenomenon". Human society is "small world" (which is how most of the 8 billion of us of are within some 6 or so steps of each other). Neurons in the human brain are "small world". The internet is "small world".
How c) This matrix is "small world". Nodes tend to be a small number of steps apart. You can potentially step from any node to any other. You can get to João do Boi from Quincy Jones in 4 steps. And from Quincy Jones to you.
Participation is free to people. Businesses outside of Bahia, Brazil will be levied a nominal fee.
Artificial intelligence not necessary. Real intelligence, yes. The matrix is a real mother for ya! Odoyá!

← in english

VOCÊ ESTÁ NO MATRIX?

"Muito obrigado por isso - estou tocado!"
✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
Estamos tocados também Sr. Webber! (violoncelo & fã da música brasileira)

"Obrigado!"
✅—Membro Fundador Darius Mans (economista, doutorado, Massachusetts Institute of Technology); presidente eleito do Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

"Estou realmente agradecido... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini (piano, artista da Blue Note)

"Obrigada, esta é uma ideia brilhante!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals (violino klezmer; fundadora da The Klezmatics)

"Este é um trabalho super impressionante! Parabéns! Obrigada por me incluir :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad (compositora & piano; composições gravadas por Yo Yo Ma e tocadas por orquestras ao redor do mundo)

Este é uma matrix no sentido original de "fonte" ("matrix" deriva de "mater", latim para "mãe"). A plataforma foi construída na Bahia, Brasil, a fim de fornecer um meio pelo qual artistas baianos pudessem ser alcançados de ao redor do mundo. Mas existe um porém lindo: Para funcionar para essas pessoas a plataforma deve funcionar para TODOS na economia criativa global. Deve (trabalhar pra) criar uma ECONOMIA CRIATIVA GLOBAL INTEGRADA.
Como a) O matrix é uma rede de pessoas/entidades na economia criativa global. Você tem um nó (uma página) — um cartão de visita para o universo numa lista de informações do século 21 que circula o mundo — de onde pode selecionar (recomendar) outras pessoas na rede, e elas podem recomendar você.
Como b) Na matemática existe algo chamado "o fenômeno do mundo pequeno". A sociedade humana é um "mundo pequeno" (que é como a maioria dos 8 bilhões de nós estão dentro de mais ou menos 6 passos de um ao outro). Os neurônios no cérebro humano são um "mundo pequeno". A internet é um "mundo pequeno".
Como c) Este matrix é "pequeno mundo". Os nós tendem a estar separados por um pequeno número de etapas. Você pode potencialmente passar de qualquer nó para qualquer outro. Você pode chegar ao João do Boi de Quincy Jones em 4 etapas. E de Quincy Jones a você.
A participação é gratuita para pessoas. As empresas fora da Bahia, Brasil serão cobradas uma taxa nominal.
Inteligência artificial não necessária. Inteligência real, sim. O matrix é uma verdadeira mãe! Odoyá!