All presentations may be requested in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese or a combination. Most topics are available as concerts, as performance-talks, as talks, and as workshops; most can also be combined and/or adapted. Narrative ballad presentations and  several others can also be performed partly as storytelling.

Please feel free to contact me to talk about what works best for you.

For concerts, I perform alone, or with one or more accompanying musicians, depending on the circumstances. Alone, I sing in traditional unaccompanied style, adding a variety of traditional frame drums and other hand percussion for certain songs; and often one or more of the following: bowed medieval vielle, Middle Eastern oud, Appalachian mountain dulcimer. I bring a medieval replica recorder for medieval melodies and folk tunes from various cultures.

 

Musicians may be additional vocalists, and/or specialists on the Middle Eastern oud, and related instruments; I can also put together a small group of two or more musicians for Medieval music. Please contact me to discuss possibilities, including programmes presented together with my daughter, well-known singer and dancer Tamar Ilana.

My repertoire:

Songs of Travelling through Decades and Continents:

Spontaneously chosen, different for each concert, songs from my repertoire: Sephardic, Yiddish, French Canadian, Spanish regional, Portuguese,  Bulgarian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Medieval European; pan-European ballads - including some in English.

Sephardic songs; Sephardic and Medieval music:
- Demystifying Sephardic / Judeo-Spanish - Ladino songs.
- Women's role in Sephardic songs
- Sephardic songs for the Jewish life cycle and/or calendar cycle
- Sephardic narrative ballads (romances)
- Music in Medieval Spain: Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities

Worlds of Jewish music:
-  Sephardic and Yiddish songs - shared themes
-  music in the lives of the Bnei Anusim / Crypto-Jews of Rural Portugal
-  Women in Jewish music

 -  Beyond "Sephardic / Ashkenazi": music in Jewish communities around the globe, including Central Asia, Africa, India.

Iberia:
- Traditional songs of various regions of Spain and Portugal, including Extremadura, Catalonia, Galicia, Castilla, León, the Balearic Islands,  Beira Baixa, Tras-os-Montes, Azores Islands.
- Alan Lomax in Spain 1952: as General Editor / Consultant and the first recipient of the American Folklife Center Kluge Alan Lomax Fellowship at the Library of Congress, I offer a special presentation on Lomax's recordings in 1952 Spain and my own follow-up fieldwork in many of the same villages half a century later.

- the adufe / square drum and other women's percussion in Portugal and Spain

 

The Balkans:
Songs, singing style, dance tunes, rhythms; dance workshops: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Serbia.

En français:
Songs from Québec, Acadie, Franco-Ontario; regions of France, Louisiana; medieval France and Occitanie.

Medieval Europe:
Songs of the troubadours (in Occitan/Catalan) and trouvères (Old French); and their counterparts; King Alfonso X "the Learned" in Galician-Portuguese, Old German (minnesänger), Old English, Medieval Latin; medieval dance tunes.

Pan-European ballads: narrative ballads followed in quirky, different versions through Sephardic culture, in Yiddish, and and in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Québec, France, Scotland, Tennessee...

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