Zing Mir A Lidele!/זינג מיר אַ לידעלע!/ Sing Me a Song in Yiddish!

Yiddish  song and performance encompasses every aspect of Ashkenazi Jewish life  and culture from the past several hundred years. Flowering to its height  in the earlier half of the 20th Century, Yiddish song and theatre  expressed joy and sadness, religious piety and secular everyday life,  political struggles and romantic love, sublime poetry and raucous humor,  persecution and nostalgia. Stewart Figa brings to life a repertoire of  classics and oddities of Yiddish song that he has built up in an over  nearly 40 year career in Jewish music.

Cantor  Stewart Figa has served at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River  Forest Illinois since 1998 and has been a Cantor in the Chicago area  since 1990. He is a founding member of the New Budapest Orpheum Society,  an ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago dedicated to  reviving European Jewish music from the first half of the 20th century.  With that group he toured in Vienna and Berlin and has frequently  appeared in New York City at venues including Symphony Space, The Center  for Jewish History, and the Neue Gallerie. He has also performed at the  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and for the  Chicago Humanities Festival. Mr. Figa performed for several seasons in  Yiddish Theatre productions in New York City where he had the privilege  of working with some of the legendary greats of the Yiddish stage  including Leon Liebgold, Seymour Rexite, Reizel Boyzk and Max Perlman.

Ilya  Levinson, music director, arranger, and pianist, holds degrees in  composition from the Moscow Conservatory and the University of Chicago.  His works for chamber music and orchestra have recently enjoyed  performances in France, Germany, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His Klezmer  Rhapsody is recorded by the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band on the Shanachie  label. Composer-in-residence with American Music Festivals, he is  Associate Professor of Music at Columbia College Chicago.

Ronnie Kuller, on accordian, is a composer, arranger, pianist and accordionist who has  performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of  Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet, the Chicago Philharmonic, and Mister Tom  Musick, and whose compositions have been performed at Ear Taxi Festival  and recorded onto wax cylinder at Edison National Historical Park.  Ronnie is a co-developer and music director for Her Only Light,  a set of new arrangements of the art and folk songs of Elizabeth  “Connie” Converse for chamber ensemble, with interdisciplinary performer  Emmy Bean. Ronnie lives in Chicago with her wonderful husband Patrick  and amazing daughter Sylvie.