Portland
Oregon
The Portland Jewish Music Festival 2025
Arts and Entertainment
April 30, 2025
From: The Portland Jewish Music FestivalTwo Weekends of Music, Dance, Film, Lectures, Workshops and More!
Schedule of Events:
May 8, 2025
7pm - 9pm - Film: On the Banks of the Tigris (Festival Opening Night)
Opening night of of the Portland Jewish Music Festival kicks off with our first week-end of music and culture of the Sephardic and Mizrachi diaspora. On the Banks of the Tigris is a musical odyssey that uncovers the hidden - and almost erased - story of Iraqi music. After escaping from Saddam's regime, Majid Shokor searches for the source of the songs he loved hearing in Baghdad's bustling streets and crowded coffeehouses. Australia is a safe haven, but the music of childhood lingers in Majid's mind. He begins to search and makes a startling discovery - that many of the best-known Iraqi songs were written by Iraqi Jews The Ba'ath Party purged Iraqi music of its origins, but Majid learns the truth, as he travels the world to meet exiled musicians who still sing and play these songs. The film’s message is that Jews, Muslims and Christians lived harmoniously in Baghdad and had a shared cultural heritage. This heritage is part of what defines Iraqi music.
There will be a short talk back after the film with Michelle Alany and festival director Eric Stern.
May 9, 2025
12pm - 1pm - Brenna McDonald Flamenco Guitarist (with Eric Stern, Oud)
The first week of the Portland Jewish Music Festival focuses on the Sephardic/Mizrachi musical heritage of Jews as well as the modern fusion between Spanish flamenco/gitano music and those genres.
In this one hour concert international flamenco guitarist Brenna McDonald will be joined by oudist Eric Stern (Vagabond Opera, Festival Director) to explore the musical relationship between the oud (a kind of fretless lute used in Mizrachi music) and its cousin the guitar.
Free/All Ages
Brenna McDonald has lived and studied flamenco in Spain and is a founding member of La Peña Flamenca de Portland and Espacio Flamenco. She currently teaches flamenco dance and guitar at Espacio Flamenco and co-organizes the performance company Espacio Flamenco Onstage. Her passion for flamenco drew her to study flamenco guitar and dance from an early age. Her first teachers were Martita Santiago and Jaime Woods in Eugene, OR. Her pursuit of learning took her to Spain to study where she lived and studied for several years between 2003 and 2009 with some of the greatest maestros, including Chiqui de Jerez, Jose Luis Balao, Parrilla de Jerez, and Juan de los Reyes. Brenna is one of the few female flamenco guitarists in the world who has achieved a level of proficiency in flamenco dance and singing accompaniment.
Eric Stern is a performer, producer, and arts advocate. As a performer, he’s appeared on NPR and has performed at the Kennedy Center, throughout the Northwest, and internationally from Portland to Paris to Poland. Best known as the founder and leader of Vagabond Opera, Stern has returned in recent years to his Jewish roots, studying and playing Oud (a kind of lute that is played throughout the Mizrachi, and Sephardic world). Along with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb he founded the Jewish Theater Project in New Mexico, Vagabond Opera in Portland and Hungry Opera Machine, a modern-opera company. He has produced productions from intimate cafe events to full-scale theatrical performance
May 10, 2025
7pm - 9:30pm - Flamenco/Mizrachi Fusion night with Espacio Flamenco, Michelle Alany and Eric Stern
Flamenco, Sephardic, and Mizrachi music share deep historical and musical connections, rooted in the cultural exchanges of the Mediterranean, the Iberian peninsula (Al-Andalus), and the Jewish diaspora. Experience a fusion of styles: Flamenco! Sephardic! Mizrachi! The artists of Espacio Flamenco, steeped in the culture and craft of Flamenco, create a rich tapestry of flamenco music, dance, and song hearkening back to Spain's golden age. The dancers and musicians of Espacio Flamenco will be joined by internationally touring violinist & vocalist Michelle Alany, and oudist Eric Stern to explore the deep connections between the cultures of the Iberian peninsula and the Mizrachi diaspora. A night of music dancing, spectacle and cultural fusion!
All ages, $22/Person advanced, $25 Day of show
May 11, 2025
3pm - 4:30pm - Amel Tafsout: Jews of the Maghreb (North Africa) History, Tradition, and Culture
North African Jewish communities, also known as Maghrebi Jews, have a long history in the Maghreb region (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya), with some communities established long before the Arab conquest and others formed after the expulsion from Iberia in the late 15th century. This fascinating presentation will be taught by world-renowned scholar, Amel Tafsout. Tafsout is a master dance artist, choreographer, instructor, frame drummer, singer, and one of the finest exponents of North African traditional and contemporary Maghreb Dance of our time.
$8-$15 Sliding Scale/All Ages
About Amel Tafsout
The legendary Amel Tafsout, meaning ‘Hopes of Spring’, is an inspirational first source master dance artist, choreographer, instructor, frame drummer, singer, energy worker and one of the finest exponents of North African traditional and contemporary Maghreb Dance of our time. With research in dance anthropology, and long training in various healing practices, Tafsout’s knowledge of her culture and her experience in many dance styles and music make her very unique.
Raised in Algeria among the finest traditional dancers and musicians, Tafsout was fascinated by dance and music since childhood. In her early twenties, Tafsout moved to Germany where she founded the Pan Arabic dance company ‘Banat As Sahra’. In the late 80s, she moved to London, U.K. where she taught and performed at various dance and music festivals and founded ‘The Tafsoutettes’ Dance Company. While currently living in the U.S.A. she is still performing and teaching worldwide.
Tafsout is like a voyager between countries, culture, and languages. Having worked and lived all over the world, unsurprisingly, migration has been a constant theme in her work. Fluent in 5 languages, she is always aware of the impact that cultures have in art and how that can be expressed in dance.
Amel has lectured, danced, taught, sung and conducted anthropological research in many countries. She has been featured in various TV programs in Europe and North Africa. She also published many articles related to dance and Maghreb women in academic and popular magazines. Her research focuses on the Ritual in Maghreb dances as well as looking at dance as a healing form. She explores the rich tapestry of movement and rhythm that has woven over time between Spain and the Maghreb, Africa and the Middle East, the Mediterranean Sea and Europe.
Tafsout developed, reconstructed and stylized the Maghreb dances through her dance experience, her research, her teaching, and performances. She had mesmerized audiences around the world with the earthy fluidity of her dance, her stunning stage presence, and great spirituality.
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7pm - 9pm - Michelle Alany and the Mystics, Mizrachi Sephardic Music Concert
Join Michelle Alany and her Mystics ensemble as they play Sephardic and Mizrachi music (along with some originals) to round out the first week-end of the festival. Vibrating with her Iraqi roots Michelle Alany releases melodies that are pure-spun gold from the soul of her violin through your ears and into your heart. Add the Mystics ensemble and it will be an unforgettable night of ancient sweet songs and timeless melodies.
All Ages/$22 Advanced, $25 Doors
Michelle Alany is an internationally touring violinist & vocalist, a dynamic performer & ambassador of world folk traditions. She specializes in soulful Sephardic, Mediterranean & Eastern European-inspired music, as well as originals, drawing on rich folk and classical traditions. Her remarkable playing is tinged with the tarab of her Iraqi roots combined with fiery Ashkenazic melodies, and the combination that practically explodes from her violin is pure alchemy. Sure, she'll play Balkan music too, she'll play originals, and what's more she'll play the roof off the joint.
May 15, 2025
7pm - 8:30pm - Sklamberg Lurje Judelman Trio, Songs of Resilience
Featuring co-founder of The Klezmatics, Lorin Sklamberg (NYC), darling of the international Yiddish scene, Sasha Lurje (Riga/Berlin), and renowned globe-trotting fiddler Craig Judelman (Seattle/Berlin) this new transatlantic collaboration is thrilled to present their latest program, Songs of Resilience. After decades spent immersed in the Yiddish culture of Ashkenazi Jews and the cultures of their European neighbors, this band presents Yiddish culture at the highest level, ranging from folk to art song, as well as theater, spiritual and dance music
May 16, 2025
12pm - 1pm - Diane Chaplin Solo Cellist
Join us for a noon concert with world-class cellist Diane Chaplin as she plays a solo concert spanning her repertoire of music by Jewish composers, Klezmer and Jewish concert music and more!
Free/All Ages
About Diane Chaplin
Diane Chaplin is a world-class cellist and nurturing music educator who lives in Portland, Oregon. She appears often as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber music artist, and tours around the US as a featured member of the Portland Cello Project. For the 2024-25 season she is the Cello Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara; she also has a large class of private cello students, both in-person and on zoom, and teaches students all over the world through the Cello Refinery. Since the spring of 2020, Diane has been performing monthly livestream concerts of solo cello music, and has learned more than 250 pieces of solo repertoire during this time.
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7pm - 8:30pm - Shabbat with Congregation P'nai Or and PDX Nigun Circle
Join congregation P’nai Or's Kabbalat Shabbat Service along with Portland Nigun Circle to celebrate Shabbat with chanting, singing, live music, movement, meditation, storytelling and more.
Free/All Ages
P’nai Or (Faces of Light) celebrates the Divine reflected in everyone – LGBTQ+, interfaith, Jews by birth, Jews by choice. We are a vibrant, egalitarian congregation founded in 1991 by Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield, z"l. Our inspiration comes from Torah, Kabbalah, the teachings of the Chassidic masters, and Jewish and non-Jewish contemporary sources.
PDX Nigun Circle is a monthly gathering where we sing, socialize, and learn the beautiful history of Jewish mysticism as communicated through the art of the nigun. Participants are encouraged to bring a nigun to share if they know one.
PDX Nigun Circle is open to all! No Jew is too young, old, religious or secular to attend. While the art of nigun was started by and is kept alive by Hasidim, all can find strength and meaning through the practice. Most importantly, you do not need to consider yourself a good singer, let alone a singer at all! The nigun is an act of vocalizing the needs of the soul, so quality is not a factor in having a meaningful experience.
What is a nigun?
A nigun is a primarily wordless melody. Emerging out of the 18th century Ashkenazic mystical revival movement called ?asidut (Chassidism), nigunim (plural) have been passed down to us today through a long oral tradition. Nigunim are vocal outpourings of all the ranges of human emotion: joy, suffering, piety and yearning, and have carried the spirit of the Jewish people though generations of exile.
The nigun has the potential to uplift and transform the individual and communal experience of spirituality and the Jewish tradition. Nigunim are said to carry and evoke the spirit of their composers. While a nigun might emerge as a cry from the lonely heart, when we gather in song, we cultivate a sense of unity and belonging that feels ecstatic, vulnerable, nourishing and decidedly rebellious.
May 17, 2025
2pm - 3pm - The Magid Presents: Shterna and the Lost Voice a musical Crankie storytelling adventure
The Magid Ensemble: Join us! – for a musical crankie storytelling adventure titled ‘Shterna and the Lost Voice’ – a new folktale by A.C. Weaver that brings together mythical stories of Elyahu Hanovi with traditional motifs of Yiddish folklore. Drawing inspiration from S. Ansky’s ethnographies of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the turn of the 20th century, 'Shterna and the Lost Voice' follows the quest of a young woman from the realms of the dead to the celestial gardens of the immortal – all to restore her friend's lost voice. Our narrator guides listeners on Shterna’s epic adventure, accompanied by live original klezmer music, all while the narrative unfolds through a papercut crankie. This dynamic performance is geared towards audiences of all ages!
$22/All Ages Advanced, $25 Doors
Shterna and the Lost Voice is the debut theatrical project of the Magid Ensemble, transporting audiences into the rich world of Yiddish folklore. Developed through rigorous research on Eastern-European Jewish folklore, this immersive storytelling production follows Shterna on an epic hero’s journey, through the living world, the underworld, and the immortal world, in order to retrieve the lost voice of her friend. Narration unfolds alongside a stunning papercut crankie (a long scroll wound onto two spools that illustrates the story as it unwinds) and is accompanied by a live original klezmer music score. Shterna and the Lost Voice is a highly engaging 50-minute storytelling performance suitable for audiences of all ages!
Shterna and the Lost Voice is presented by The Magid Ensemble (magid, meaning “storyteller” in Yiddish) – a new collaboration featuring award-winning klezmer musicians and composers Mattias Kaufmann, Raffi Boden, and Rachel Leader, Yiddishist and storyteller Weaver, and visual artist Kiah Raymond. The Magid Ensemble explores the interplay of sound, story, light, and shadow to create expressive and immersive storytelling landscapes.
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7pm - 10pm - Jake Shulman-Ment Duo with Brivele!
Saturday night Klez with internationally renowned violinist Jake Shulman-Ment performing with oudist and guitarist Yoshie Fruchter. Seattle based duo Brivele opens.
All Ages/ $22 Advanced, $25 Doors
About Jake Shulman-Ment
Brooklyn-based Jake Shulman-Ment is among the most highly regarded klezmer musicians performing today. He tours and records internationally as a soloist, and with Midwood, Daniel Kahn, Joey Weisenberg, Abigale Reisman, Pete Rushefsky, and many others. Past collaborators have included The Painted Bird, Di Naye Kapelye, The Brothers Nazaroff, Frank London, Sanda Weigl, Adrian Receanu, Duncan Sheik, Francesca Ter-Berg, Laurel Premo, Ali Dineen, Michael Alpert, Fleytmuzik, MetroFolk, and Romashka.
Jake performs tonight with Yoshie Fruchter. Yoshie Fruchter is a guitar, bass and oud player. Fruchter is notable for his work in composing and interpreting Jewish music, and has forged new directions with his performance, regardless of genre. His current project, Sandcatchers, in which he plays oud and is joined by lap steel player Myk Freedman and Erik Friedlander on cello, explores the sounds of the Middle East combined with the American South.
Brivele is a Seattle-based duo who braid together Yiddish song, anti-fascist and labor balladry, folk-punk, and contemporary rabble-rousing in stirring vocal harmony. Brivele is touring in support of their forthcoming album, “Khaveyrim Zayt Greyt,” which will be released on May 1, 2025 through Borscht Beat records.
In Yiddish, Brivele means "little letter." Like letters, songs travel — through time and over borders. They pick up dirt, aromas, fingerprints. They are sent to lovers, they foment revolution, they get stolen and censored, burned and salvaged, sewn into our clothes.
Brivele is Maia Brown and Stefanie Brendler, who journey into the archives of Yiddish anti-fascist musical tradition, bringing together anti-authoritarian satire, mournful remembrances, and the disguised political commentary in folk ditties and theater classics. These songs are a correspondence: ancestors' voices speaking clearly and uncompromisingly, sometimes sweetly, to the present moment.
May 18, 2025
7pm - 8:30pm - Yankl Falk & The Carpathian Pacific Express!
All aboard!! Join with some of Portland’s finest musicians in an exciting exploration of klezmer and Yiddish song, Romanian and Hungarian fiddle virtuosity, mystical Hasidic chant, raucous songs of drunken exuberance in many languages, and much more!
Carpathian: Our repertoire draws from the Yiddish- and Hungarian-speaking world of our grandparents, with echoes of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and elsewhere.
Pacific: We live in Oregon in the early 21st century. We play what we hear.
Express: More direct than the Local.
All Ages/$22 Advanced, $25 Doors
About Yankl Falk
Jack (Yankl) Falk is best known for his years as singer/clarinetist with the Budapest-based Di Naye Kapelye, with whom he recorded three albums of Jewish roots music from the Carpathians. Falk’s instrumental and vocal repertoire draws from the Yiddish- and Hungarian-speaking world of his childhood, offering musical sustenance for the truly bizarre times in which we now find ourselves.
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Date: May 10 - 18, 2025
Location: Eastside Jewish Commons , 2420 NE Sandy Blvd Portland, OR 97232