About Alicia Svigals
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Alicia Svigals,
violinist/composer, a founder of the Klezmatics and of the all-women band Mikveh,
is considered by many to be the world's foremost klezmer fiddler. During the
past decade, she almost singlehandedly revived klezmer fiddle playing, which
came close to extinction in this century; traditional klezmer violin style is
now being played again by hundreds of her students, including most of today's
best professional players. She taught and toured with violinist Itzhak
Perlman, who recorded her compositions as duets with Ms.
Svigals accompanied by the Klezmatics, and she was awarded first prize at the
Safed, Israel international klezmer festival competition. |
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She has been featured (as a
soloist and with Mikveh) in V-Day, gala performances of playwright Eve
Ensler's Obie-winning The Vagina Monologues, most recently at Madison
Square Garden with Phoebe Snow, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Whoopi Goldberg,
Susan Sarandon, Wynona Ryder, Calista Flockhart, Lily Tomlin, Margaret Cho,
Erica Jong, Brooke Shields, and Rita Wilson. She has composed for the Kronos Quartet,
and has been written for by composer Osvaldo Golijov, who was commissioned by
Merkin Concert Hall to create a work featuring Ms. Svigals and clarinetist
David Krakauer (soon to be released on CD as Rocketekiya). She has
appeared as a soloist on NPR's New Sounds Live and at festivals such as
FiddleFest in New York's Central Park, Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA, and
the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Her debut solo album Fidl (Traditional Crossroads) is the world's
very first klezmer fiddle CD. In
Svigals' band the Klezmatics, she and five other musicians created
contemporary Jewish roots music that combined the joyous and mystical Yiddish
folk tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and an overtly political world
view. For sixteen years, Svigals toured internationally with the Klezmatics
and recorded five albums which reached the top ten of the Billboard, College
Music Journal, and European World Music Charts. She appeared with the
Klezmatics on Prairie Home Companion, Rosie O'Donnell's Kids are Punny,
Good Morning America, Fox After Breakfast, MTV News, Nickelodeon, NPR's New
Sounds, and BBC television and radio, and she was featured on NPR's Weekend
Edition. As a composer for the group, she provided music for theater, dance
and film, including the score to Tony Kushner's plays A Dybbuk (at the
Public Theater) and It's an Undoing World (Ford Theater, LA), Judith
Helfand's P.O.V. documentary A Healthy Baby Girl, and collaborations
with poets Allen Ginsburg and Jerome Rothenberg, Israeli singer Chava
Alberstein, and K.D. Lang's songwriter/producer Ben Mink. Her multi-media
project The Third Seder, featuring Tony Kushner, choreographer David
Dorfman, author Sarah Shulman, visual artist Neil Goldberg, and the
Klezmatics, was presented by La Mama, Etc. and the Jewish Museum in New York.
Ms. Svigals and the Klezmatics recorded two albums for EMI with violinist
Itzhak Perlman, one of which is one of the best-selling folk albums of all
time. They performed with him on PBS' Emmy-winning Great Performances
documentary In the Fiddler's House and on Late Night With David
Letterman, and appeared with Mr. Perlman in concert at Radio City Music
Hall, Tanglewood, Wolf Trap and other venues. Ms.
Svigals plays and writes in genres ranging from heavy metal to New Age to
Greek island fiddle and she's recorded for everyone from Lipa Shmelzer to the
L-Word. Her rock career includes appearances with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page
of Led Zeppelin at the Boston Fleet Center and Hartford Civic Center, Bob
Newirth and John Cale's (Velvet Underground and Rolling Thunder Revue) album The
Last Day On Earth, and the Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen.
She performed and recorded improvisations for New Music artists Marc Ribot
and John Zorn. Her composing credits include the soundtracks to Judith
Helfand's documentary The Uprising of 1934, with Svigals on fiddle and
singer Peggy Seeger in an old-timey flavored score, string quartet parts for
Jewish spiritual singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman at her Carnegie Hall
appearances and live album, and new live music for N.Y. choreographer Risa
Jaroslow, with whom she appeared at Lincoln Center. She is featured on Hasidic superstar
Avraham Fried's Avinu Malkeynu, and she was hired by Chabad rabbi and
producer Zalman Goldstein to arrange Lubavitcher nigunim (wordless
spirituals) for her klezmer quartet on the newly-released Vodkazak.
Most recently, she was
featured on Herb Alpert’s recording of Belz, arranged by Marvin Hamlisch,
soon to be released by the Jewish Music Group. Alicia Svigals leads lectures and workshops on Jewish music for adults and children, directs klezmer string orchestras, loves to play weddings and bar and bas mitzvahs, and has published essays on Jewish music and culture. |
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