Madam Lewicki's Calendar

Spring 2010

Sunday, May 9
12-3pm Palo Alto Jewish Culture Center: Russian-American Fair (WWII Victory Day + Mother's Day): PA JCC Campus Town Square Free! Three hours of dance and music! I'll be doing a set of klezmer music & Yiddish song with Peter Jaques (clarinet) & Daniel Fabrikant (bass). The bill includes Gaucho Gypsy Jazz, Nice Guy Trio, Balkan jams, Mark Growden's solo performance. Free admission, all ages. http://www.paloaltojcc.org/index.php?src=events&srctype=detail&refno=169454&category=Special%20Events&submenu=Special_Events

Saturday, April 24
8PM
With Adrienne Cooper, Stu Brotman, & Sharon Bernstein in concert, sponsored by the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. At the Westin Hotel near San Francisco Airport, 1 Old Bayshore Rd. (Or there's a free hotel shuttle from the airport.)
We will be singing songs about resistance, revolution, & potatoes. The first half of the program will be cantors Judy & Herschel Fox.

Thursday, May 20
At the new Freight & Salvage coffeehouse, with Sheldon Brown, Richard Saunders, Stephen Saxon. We're sharing the bill with Kugelplex (featuring Jewlia Eisenberg) & the Red Hot Chachkes.

Winter 2009

Sunday & Monday, Dec. 6 & 7, 11am, Davies Symphony Hall:
A Holiday Special with the San Francisco Symphony
Celebrating the Winter Solstice, Chanuka, Divali, Christmas, & anything else you can think of! I'll be representing with Sheldon Brown & Stephen Saxon of the Klez-X. Stephen has arranged some klezmer music for the symphony, including xylophone & kettledrum, so this should be pretty amusing.

Spring 2009

Thursday, May 7, 7:30 P.M. -- FREE
The An-Ski Collection
A Musical Expedition
We will take a tour through the (mostly) Bessarabian songs collected by S. An-Ski (author of The Dybbuk) starting in 1908, when he travelled with an Edison phonograph in a horse-drawn wagon from shtetl to shtetl, persuading people to sing their Yiddish songs into the phonograh horn to record onto a wax cylinder. This program, like last year's Yiddish Tango program at the library, will be accompanied by the zine Yiddish Song Illustrated.

Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
(free parking in the building on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy)

Winter 2008

Friday, Dec 19, 12 noon, Zellerbach Auditorium
Saturday, Dec 20, 8pm, Zellerbach Auditorium
The Gonifs! Stu Brotman, Peter Jaques, Aaron Kierbel, Aaron Novik, Jeanette Lewicki
Figs and Pomegranates Festival With Teslim and Kitka!
http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2008/world_stage/pf.php
Amazing Turkish music & the astounding women's voices of Kitka in a children's show on Friday & an adult show on Saturday night. The gonifs are everybody's favorite klezmer band, including mine. We hardly ever get to play together, because everybody's in four or five different music projects. So you should really come to this one. There are a few comps for volunteers, just contact Jeanette.

Winter 2007

Thursday, December 13, 7:30 P.M. -- FREE
Yiddish Tango: Songs My Grandma Never Taught Me
A Performance with Interjections (Possibly Educational)

Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
(free parking in the building on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy)

This will be a kickass program of Yiddish tangos collected from YIVO Buenos Aires, from the Kulturkongres in New York City, from old ladies in their kitchens, & from tattered broadsides warning nice shtetl girls not to go to Argentina. (Not to mention the Jewish Library, where I first heard some of these songs in the old listening booth.) There will be lots of underworld songs about gangsters, whores & chocolate, & incredible photos by Rafi Goldchain, who dressed himself up as all his ancestors, male & female.

Co-sponsored by KlezCalifornia, Inc.
FREE FREE FREE, so show up early to get a good seat.

Summer 2007

Sunday, July 21: Berkeley/Richmond JCC

8pm, in the JCC auditorium, 1414 Walnut St. at Rose in Berkeley. I'll be playing & singing with members of the Klez-X (Sheldon Brown on Bb clarinet, Richard Saunders on bass) & the lovely & talented Aaron Kierbel of the gonifs on drums. We're first on a double bill with the Klezmer Playboys, founded by Glen Hartman of the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars. Admission is $10 members, $12 at the door; contact me if you need to slide down the scale.

This may be my last concert of the summer. If you really need to get your Yiddish on, come by the Prisoners' Literature Project on a Tuesday night (2022 Blake at Shattuck in Berkeley) & I'll sing you a Yiddish song while we send packages of free books to prisoners. 7:30-10pm. FREE!

Sunday, July 8: Stanford Jazz Festival, "Klezmer Meets Jazz."

2:30pm in the Stanford Jazz Workshop hall, with everybody's favorite Lesbian Jewish Juggler, Sara Felder, as MC; plus the Left Turn No Signal jazz band. This is a family show, so it's only $5! Our klezmer band will be the usual gonifs: Peter Jaques (Bb clarinet), Aaron Novik (bass clarinet), Daniel Fabrikant (bass), Alan Hall (percussion). And me! Songs about love, revolution & potatoes.

Spring 2007

Sunday, May 27: Klezmer Brunch at Mama Toby's Revolution Cafe

Peter Jaques (Bb clarinet), Aaron Novik (Bb, bass clarinet), Aaron Kierbel (drums), Richard Saunders (bass), Jeanette Lewicki (accordion, vocals). The full five-piece band.

Meanwhile, Jeanette's OTHER klezmer band, the San Francisco Klezmer Experience, in in town. For more info:
http://www.klezx.com

Saturday: May 19 at the Makeout Room

8pm
Mission Creek Music Festival presents rocking klezmer music, soulful Yiddish song & "gypsy folk" with:
the gonifs (8pm)
& Karpov (9pm)
at the Makeout Room, 22nd St between Mission & Valencia. $6 gets you a chance to dance, make out, shmooze & kvell as the gonifs play some cool new material. When I first moved back from Brooklyn, the Makeout Room bartender girl told me, "It's a klezmer explosion in the Mission!" And it is!

Sunday, May 20: Klezmer Brunch at Mama Toby's Revolution Cafe

The Makeout Room (see above) is right across the street from Cafe Revolution, where Jeanette will play klezmer brunch on Sunday (12-3) with any musicians still left standing. This might end up as kind of a solo show actually, expanding the definition of "klezmer brunch" to include Edith Piaf, Woody Guthrie, Rosa Eskenazi & beer.

Sunday, April 15: Klezmer Brunch at Mama Toby's Revolution Cafe

12 Noon til 3pm
3248 22nd St @ Bartlett
FREE! Donation strongly encouraged. Rocking klezmer & Yiddish songs about sex, jail & potatoes. Full band this week: Aaron Kierbel (drums), Peter Jaques on Bb clarinet, Richard Saunders of the Klez-X (bass), Aaron Novik (bass clarinet) & Jeanette Lewicki on accordion. Please note we are starting & ending EARLY (brunch in the Mission starts at noon).

http://www.myspace.com/revcafe2006

Sunday, March 4:

Purim Party!
A Traveling Jewish Theatre at the Club Verdi, Mariposa at 17th St., SF

Music by Peter Jaques (clarinet) & Dan Cantrell (accordion) with special guests Michael Alpert & Kitka! I begged my way in by promising to lead some Yiddish dances -- which is silly since Michael Alpert is not only a world-renowned Yiddish singer/instrumentalist but one of the most beautiful dancers you will ever see. But, hey, it's Purim! Everything's supposed to be upside down, inside out & backwards! At least I'll be in disguise, surrounded by beautiful boys in drag.
http://www.atjt.com

And if you can't afford, that, come to the after-party:

Sunday, March 4: Klezmer Brunch at Mama Toby's Revolution Cafe

12 noon-3pm
3248 22nd St @ Bartlett
FREE!
Yes, the Revolution will be klezmerized. With Aaron Kierbel (drums), Daniel Fabrikant (bass), Aaron Novik (clarinet), & Madam Lewicki on accordion & Yiddish vocals. Come show off your Purim drag!. http:www.myspace.com/revcafe2006

Thursday, March 8: at AMNESIA

9pm 853 Valencia St. (between 19th & 20th)
San Francisco
$7 Jimbo Trout's solo CD release party! With an amazing lineup of solo acts: Tochio Hirano (singing Jimmie Rodgers), Scott Young, Kelly Stoltz, Jimbo, & me! I may sing some of my original songs in public for the first time ever. I've asked to go on early, so we can all have fun afterwards.

Saturday Feb 3 :

THE GONIFS with BRASS MENAZERI & live DJs spinning BALKAN BRASS GYPSY (Roma) tunes
at Kafana Balkana. This is a benefit for free circus shows for refugee children in Kosovo, teaching circus arts to kids & incorporating them into the shows.

at ART SF: 110 Capp St., 5th floor, San Francisco

Saturday, Feb. 3 8pm
with DJs Zarko & Zeljko
8pm-1am
$8-$15 sliding scale

Happy new year, everybody! I'm currently in San Francisco, playing klezmer again, teaching all those groovy Brooklyn tunes to the local klezmer EXPLOSION.
Exactly at midnight on New Year's Eve I was lost in Petaluma with my favorite drummer, asking for directions from a total stranger who turned out to have a saxophone in one hand & a firecracker in the other. Bang! Squonk! Just keep right on straight ahead!

Fall 2006

Every Tuesday at Moto
with Jacob Shulman-Ment (fiddle) , Michael Winograd (clarinet) & guests
Tuesdays 9:30pm-12am

A new generation of Yiddish music in a wonderful cafe bar on the Williamsburg border. Take the J/M to Hewes Street & look for half a bicycle hanging over the doorway on Broadway at Hooper. 9:30 til about midnight. FREE.
http://www.cafe-moto.com

MAX & MINKA
A benefit for Jews for Racial & Economic Justice
Thursday November 16th
6pm reception, 7pm program
$125
As you may have heard, the 10th Annual Marshall Meyer Risk-Taker Awards are approaching. This year, JFREJ is honoring risk-takers Tony Kushner, Grace Paley and Transport Workers Local Union 100. Max & Minka will be entertaining at the gala reception.

Brotherhood Synagogue, 28 Gramercy Park South, on 20th Street between 3rd Avenue and Irving Square (the 4, 5, 6, N, Q, R to Union Square) http://www.jfrej.org/marshallmeyers.html

Yiddish Kulturkongres Benefit
Monday, Nov. 20
Lucille Lortell Theatre 7pm
$36

Jeanette Lewicki (accordion), Jake Shulman-Ment (fiddle) & Jeff Perlman (clarinet) will play as part of a program honouring stars of the Yiddish theatre, many of whom will be performing. The Lortell is a beautiful vintage theatre where Lotte Lenja performed in the Threepenny Opera. 121 Christopher Street (between Bleeker & Hudson). Reservations recommended: http://www.ticketcentral.com

LABOR LUNCH at YIVO
Sunday, Nov. 19
1pm
FREE!

Gala luncheon in honour of the Jewish Labor Bund (the people who helped bring you the eight-hour work day, the lunch break, & the weekend). Pearl Teitelbaum will be singing Yiddish labour songs & I will accompany her. Admission is FREE. RSVP to Miriam Dolin (212-294-6140 or mdolin@yivo.cjh.org by Nov. 6.

Angels & Accordions:
Green-Wood Cemetery Walking Tour with Guy Klucevsek
Saturday, Oct. 7 (rain date: Oct. 8)
12 noon & 3:30pm
FREE!

A multi-accordion dance installation in the Gothic setting of Brooklyn's most beautiful graveyard. Once a year, the living are allowed to tour the crypts, visit rarely-opened tombs, & experience a site-specific piece by dance/theater/etcetera. The walking tour lasts about two hours & is part of Open House New York. This year there will be solo & ensemble performances by accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek. Other accordionists include composer Bob Goldberg, Jeanette Lewicki, Carolyn Ryder Cooley, & Matthew Fass.

"Klucevsek is a trailblazing virtuoso. " --The Wall Street Journal

"A rebel with an accordion...Klucevsek combines poker-faced wit and imagination with command of his instrument, forcing you to re-think the accordion’s limitations. " --Downbeat

"Klucevsek is a musical Orient Express whose themes pass from Hungarian gypsy to Slovenian waltz to Middle Eastern wail without stopping at the borders. " Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

FREE!

The Green-Wood Cemetery, main gate, 25th Street & Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn (closest train: R to 25th Street @ 4th Avenue) Reservations: 718.788.7850 or

http://www.ohny.org
http://www.guyklucevsek.com
http://www.dancetheatreetcetera.org

Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird at Barbes
Saturday, Oct. 7, 8pm
Daniel Kahn is doing some of the best new Yiddish music around, & I'm thrilled to be included in this rare concert with his band The Painted Bird. We will be joined by another wonderful modern Yiddish composer, Michael Winograd (clarinet), as well as Dan Blacksberg (trombone), Nick Cudahy (bass), Brandon Seabrook (mandolin), & Richie Barshay on the drums.
Daniel & I spent a month this summer working with Alan Bern in Weimar, & after that a week with Winograd at Klezkanada, & I can tell you: these guys are wildly talented, with the stress on wild. This should be a very fun night, especially after the graveyard (see above).
http://www.barbesbrooklyn.com
http://www.danielkahn.com