Mikveh

Mikveh began when Obie-winning playwright Eve Ensler called Klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals to put together an all-star group of female klezmer musicians to join a host of celebrity performers at her gala event V-Day in New York. As a founding member of the Klezmatics, Svigals was well-positioned to do just that, and she called singer Adrienne Cooper, accordionist Lauren Brody and bass player Nicki Parrott. The group rocked the house at their very first performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom Theater and then at Madison Square Garden for the second V-Day, sharing the stage with Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Lily Tomlin, Glenn Close, Phoebe Snow, and Brooke Shields among others. Soon afterwards trumpeter/vocalist Susan Hoffman Watts joined the group and kicked up the excitement one more notch.

Since then, Mikveh has brought their unique woman-inflected spin on Jewish roots music, both traditional and brand-new, to audiences around the U.S. and Europe. In live concerts and on their eponymous debut CD, they create music that draws on the experiences and traditions of Jewish women, singing songs about spiritual fervor, forbidden love, pregnancy and miscarriage, hard work, a bas mitzvah, domestic violence, and powerful women everywhere. They combine rare finds from the folk tradition on surprisingly contemporary topics, with new Yiddish and English songs written in collaboration with lyricists who range in age from twenty-something to eighty-something, keeping the tradition alive and propelling it forward. And they leaven their arrangements with the ecstatic energy of old-time klezmer dance music, performed by some of the very best instrumentalists in the klezmer world.

Mikveh, the band, is named in tribute to the traditional women's mikveh (ritual bath), the place of monthly immersion marking the cycles of women's lives.

Accordionist Lauren Brody is an alumna of the pioneering klezmer revival band Kapelye, with whom she toured and recorded for over a decade, and is also a Yiddish singer well known for her unique old-world sound. Lauren leads a parallel life as a performer of the traditional music of Bulgaria and the Balkans, and has won a series of grants to conduct groundbreaking research in Bulgaria on early commercial folk music recordings. As a klezmer accordionist, she has appeared with the Joel Rubin Klezmer Band and Henry Sapoznik's Freylakh, Freylakh, and can be heard on soundtracks for the films "Partisans of Vilna", "Across the Brooklyn Bridge" and "The Chosen". Her performance credits in the Balkan music arena include the Aman Folk Ensemble, Pitu Guli Orchestra, Elan Folk Theatre and Zhenska Pesna; for four years she also toured the U.S., Europe and Australia with internationally acclaimed Bulgarian Gypsy saxophonist Yuri Yunakov. Currently, when Lauren's not concertizing with Mikveh, she's playing keyboard and singing with the Ivan Milev Balkan Folk Band.

"Lauren Brody (contributed) a multiplicity of styles, virtuosic technique and literate improvisation . vocal elegance" - San Francisco Weekly

Adrienne Cooper is considered to be among the outstanding contemporary interpreters and innovators in Yiddish vocal music. She has mentored and inspired a generation of singers and bands in the burgeoning klezmer revival scene , teaching internationally and appearing worldwide on concert and theater stages. Her singing has been featured on some twenty recordings, including the Grammy nominated "Partisans of Vilna." Adrienne has performed and recorded with, among others, The Klezmatics, Marilyn Lerner, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, and Frank London's Shekhine Big Band. She is co-creator of two acclaimed works of Yiddish/English music theater ­ The Memoir of Gluckl of Hameln and Ghetto Tango (with Zalmen Mlotek.) Each summer, under the auspices of the Jewish Community Development Fund of American Jewish World Service, she travels to Russia and the Ukraine to train a new generation of Jewish musicians from throughout the former Soviet territories. Back in the U.S.A., she directs The Center for Cultural Jewish Life at the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring.

"Electric moments . Adrienne Cooper provided the kind of experience that happens when a great singer delivering a great song touches an audience in mind, heart and memory" - The Gazette, Montreal

Nicki Parrott came to New York in May 1994 on an Arts Council grant from Australia to study with the internationally acclaimed bassist Rufus Reid. Nicki currently plays every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club with the legendary guitarist and inventor Les Paul. Since her arrival in the U.S., she has performed with such notable musicians as Clark Terry, Billy Taylor, Terri Thornton, Holly Hoffman, DIVA, Marlena Shaw, Patrice Rushen, Skitch Henderson, the New York Pops and Florida Pops Orchestras with DIVA, Bucky Pizzarelli, Warren Vache Jr., Rebecca Paris, Ron Jackson, Bernard Purdie, Roy Meriwether and David Krakauer. Nicki has performed at such major festivals in the USA as Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, and the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. Overseas, she has performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival, the Cully Lavaux and the Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland, the Edinburgh and Grimsby Jazz Festivals in the UK, the Ottawa Jazz Festival in Canada, and various Australian festivals.

"Nicki Parrott's bass lead transformed a conservative audience into an enthusiastic mob demanding double encores" - Downbeat Magazine

Klezmer Violinist Alicia Svigals, considered by many to be the world's leading klezmer fiddler, was a founding member of renowned Jewish roots groups the Klezmatics, with whom she toured and recorded for seventeen years. Currently the composer/music director for Tony Kushner's (Angels in America) newest play Its An Undoing WOrld, she has also worked with for Itzhak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet, playwright Eve Ensler (the Vagina Monologues), poet Allen Ginsburg, Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the Ben Folds Five, Jewish spiritual singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman, Hasidic superstar Avraham Fried and many others. She has appeared on David Letterman, MTV, Good Morning America, PBS' Great Performances, and NPR's Prairie Home Companion, Weekend Edition and New Sounds. Her solo recording 'Fidl', the world's first klezmer fiddle CD, is on the Traditional Crossroads label. Alicia also leads a rollicking wedding and bar mitzvah band, and in addition to her musical activities, writes and lectures on traditional and contemporary Jewish music. The critics say: "stunningly gifted" "brilliant fiddling" "dazzling virtuosity" "without question the greatest living exponent of the klezmer fiddle." "...violin playing with depth and urgency..." L.A. Times. Alicia can be reached at her website: www.aliciasvigals.com.

"Listening to Alicia Svigals' violin wail . is nothing short of an ethereal musical experience, like turning an ear to heaven and listening" - The Jewish Reporter, Las Vegas

Trumpeter Susan Watts represents the youngest generation of an authentic klezmer dynasty that reaches back to the Jewish Ukraine of the 19th century, beginning with her great grandfather, bandleader and composer, Joseph Hoffman. Susan is the sole living purveyor of a klezmer style trumpet and sound which electrified Jewish American audiences for decades. Today, audiences are dazzled and delighted by Susan and her mother, the great klezmer drummer Elaine Hoffman Watts and their Philadelphia-based group, KlezMs. In addition to playing with a variety of noted klezmer musicians from around the world, Susan has recorded and performed with Henkus Netsky, director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and is a member of Frank London's Klezmer All-star Brass Band, Der Shikere Kapelye. Recently, she scored and recorded the soundtrack for the award winning film Breath, and recorded the soundtrack for a documentary on Philadelphia klezmer, A Joyful Noise. Susan has taught at klezmer festivals, directs a children's klezmer ensemble and simply enjoys the hell out of playing her trumpet.

Visit Mikveh's website at www.mikvehklezmer.info

More info on www.yiddishmusicians.com or www.traditionalcrossroads.com (Mikveh's record company)