KlezCalendar

Vivacious Lithanian singer and folklorist Maria Krupoves presents a rich portrait of Jewish life in Eastern Europe through her vivid stylings of Yiddish song. She is internationally acclaimed as an interpreter of the folksongs of Central and Eastern Europe. She has traveled extensively to find songs in Yiddish, Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Gypsy (Roma), Karaim, Tatar, and other languages. Multilingual herself, she sings her entire repertory in the original languages. She will be performing with her trio including Joey Weisenberg on mandolin.

She has performed in Lithuania, Poland, Germany, France, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the United States, sometimes in collaboration with the BBC, the WDR (West German Radio), and Lithuanian and Polish radio and TV.

She sang in Yiddish and other languages of Eastern Europe at the Yiddish Summit (Strasbourg, 2000), the UNESCO Conference Dialogue among Civilizations (Vilnius, 2001), the Frankfurt Book Fair 2002, the Berlin Cultural Festival 2003, the Sara Rosenfeld Yiddish Festival (Montreal, 2004) and other international gatherings.

She sings in the Holocaust documentary film 'Out of the Forest' (Tel-Aviv, 2003) and will be heard in the documentary film of the prewar Vilna Jewish community 'Vilna, the Vanished City' (New York).

Dr. Krupoves is also a scholar. She teaches the history of Jewish music and the history and folklore of the stateless cultures of Lithuania (Yiddish, Karaim, Tatar, Roma, and Russian Old Believers) in the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Department of History at Vilnius University.

Her repertory of Yiddish songs includes some she herself recorded from Holocaust survivors. She speaks Yiddish fluently and has published articles in Yiddish in the Forverts (New York) and in YIVO Yedies / YIVO News (New York).

In 2001, Dr. Krupoves was awarded a Vladimir and Pearl Heyfetz Fellowship at YIVO in New York. While in the United States, she lectured on the Yiddish culture of Lithuania and performed at YIVO, at Columbia, Indiana, Yale and Yeshiva Universities, and at Brooklyn College.

She has recorded three CD's with a multicultural repertory, among them Songs of the Vilna Ghetto, recorded at a concert in the former Vilna Ghetto Theater.

Her most recent CD called 'Without a Country' with two musicians from New York City, Joey Weisenberg (mandolin) and Travis DiRuzza (bass). The album presents songs of European stateless peoples in 8 languages: Ladino, Yiddish, Ashkenazic Hebrew, Karaim, Tatar, Roma (Gypsy), Russian (Russian Old Believers) and Belarusian.