Hankus Netsky
A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Hankus Netsky is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation Department and founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, an internationally renowned Yiddish music ensemble. He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television, collaborated closely with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Theodore Bikel, and Robert Brustein, and produced numerous recordings, including 10 by the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has also recorded with Ran Blake, Marty Ehrlich, Rosalie Gerut, Linda J. Chase, Theodore Bikel, Margot Leverett, and Cantor Jeff Warschauer. He received the Yosl Mlotek Award and a “Forward Fifty” award for his role in the resurgence of traditional Eastern European Jewish ethnic musical culture. He was also awarded a New England Conservatory Outstanding Alumni award, along with the school’s Louis Krasner and Lawrence Lesser awards for Excellence in Teaching. He is a sessional lecturer at McGill University and has taught at Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, and Hebrew College. His essays on Jewish music have been published by the University of California Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, the University of Scranton Press, Hips Roads, Indiana University Press, and the University Press of America, and Temple University Press published his book Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia in 2015. Dr. Netsky is on the faculty of Silk Road’s Global Musician Workshop and performs regularly with violinist and vocalist Eden MacAdam-Somer, gospel singer Janice “Octavia” Allen, cantor George Mordecai, and in former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s “PoemJazz” project. He served as vice president for education at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., and has been a key figure in Jewish cultural education workshops, including Klezkamp, KlezKanada, Paper Bridge, Yidstock, Aleph Ordination Week, Me’ah, and Circle Lodge.
DoYeon Kim
DoYeon Kim is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning virtuoso of the gayageum (a traditional Korean string instrument). In addition to traditional Korean music, DoYeon specializes in World Music, Free Jazz, Jazz, and Improvisation. She regularly performs solo and group concerts worldwide in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. As a graduate of the New England Conservatory, and protégé of the world’s leading gayageum master Yi Jiyoung, DoYeon has performed alongside many distinguished improvisors, including Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, Barry Guy and Anthony Coleman. Her 2017 album Gapi was nominated for a Korean Grammy award, and her latest album Macrocosm, with Joe Morris, received international critical acclaim. DoYeon’s approach to playing the gayageum, as well as improvised music, is a singularly unique experience.
Mia Friedman
Mia Friedman is a virtuosic fiddler and singer. She is largely influenced by American roots music and old-time Appalachian traditions, and blends this with contemporary music in her compositions. She graduated from New England Conservatory in 2012 where she studied with Anthony Coleman, Carla Kihlstedt, and Hankus Netsky, and is an active composer, performer, and educator. Mia teaches at the Community Music School of Springfield, and leads elementary and high school string programs in seven public schools in Springfield, MA. She is the orchestra teacher at the Hartsbrook Waldorf School, and teaches at many traditional fiddle music camps during the summer. Her song “Across the Water” won the 2010 John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the folk category, and she was the 2006 New Hampshire Highland Games Scottish Fiddle Champion.
Mia performs in Hollow Deck, Creative Healing, and Ari & Mia, a duo she has with her sister, Ariel Friedman. Ari & Mia have toured all over the United States and Australia, and have four CDs, two of which were ranked high on National folk radio charts.
https://friendshiptapes.bandcamp.com/album/human-dscent-between-two-elk
Ariel Friedman
Ariel Friedman is a multi-genre cellist, composer, and poet. A winner of the 2020 Women Composers Festival of Hartford's call for scores and a recipient of New England Conservatory's 2018 Alumni Award, she is steeped both in the music of American roots traditions and a broad range of classical repertoire. Ariel tours the U.S. and abroad with her sister as Ari & Mia, both award-winning songwriters, and has performed nationally and internationally with many other folk-based ensembles. She is the founding cellist of Cardamom Quartet, a Boston-based ensemble engaged in reimagining the traditional canon by performing music exclusively by women.
An advocate of new music and a composer herself, Ariel performs with Boston Modern Orchestra Project and has written music for and collaborated with many ensembles and soloists including Craft Ensemble, Palaver Strings, Box Not Found, pianist Miki Sawada’s Gather Hear project, and the young artists of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
As a poet, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, december, Literary Mama, Lucky Jefferson, and Soundings East among others. A 2022 Pushcart nominee and 2023 Best New Poets nominee, she is a winner of the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program and one of her poems will be featured in Boston’s City Hall until Spring 2024. She is working on her first chapbook.
Zach Mayer
With over 10 million hits on YouTube for his “Subway Sax Battle,” Zach has performed with John Zorn, Frank London, Michael Alpert, Joey Weisenberg, and Bobby McFerrin. He performs internationally with Zion80, a 10-piece Jewish Afrobeat band inspired by the music of Shlomo Carlebach, and his folk sextet, Night Tree, has toured internationally and has released two albums produced by Seamus Egan of SOLAS. He has been on the faculty at the Brandeis Institute of Music and Art, Laguardia Arts High School in Manhattan, and teaches at Jewish music festivals worldwide. Zach is the musical director of Kahal B’raira, a humanistic Jewish congregation in Cambridge. He received his Masters of Music from the New England Conservatory in Boston.
Abigale Reisman
Abigale Reisman is a violinist, composer, improviser, and educator. She is a co-founder of Thread Ensemble, an experimental trio that creates music out of interactions with their audiences. She is a member of Tredici Bacci, which was featured in Rolling Stone's "10 Artists You Need to Know: November 2016". She is also a composer, arranger, and performer in the International Jewish Music Festival award winning band, Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band. Abigale earned her Bachelor's degree at The Manhattan School of Music in Classical Violin Performance and went on to receive her Master's degree at The New England Conservatory in Contemporary Improvisation. She has toured the world performing klezmer, classical, pop, and experimental music. Abigale has had the privilege to share the stage with great musicians such as Father John Misty, David Krakauer, Amanda Palmer, Jeffery Zeigler, Sarah Jarosz, Hankus Netsky, The Ballroom Thieves, and Anthony Coleman.
Rachel Panitch
Rachel Panitch is a Boston-based violinist, improviser, composer, and teaching artist. She has been an artist-in-residence in neighborhoods, in schools, and in Zion and Acadia National Parks. She is the 2019 recipient of the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts. She is a Resident Musician with musiConnects, and a founding member of both Cardamom Quartet and Thread Ensemble, which creates participatory works for audience, vibraphone and violins.
Julian Loida
Called “one of the Boston music scene's most valuable players” by The Art Fuse, Julian Loida is a percussionist, composer, and producer. Loida’s musical curiosity and open-mindedness has propelled him towards a wide-range of sounds, genres, and artistic endeavors. He’s performed jazz, folk, and classical, collaborating with dancers, visual artists, songwriters/composers, and musicians of all stripes. The thirst to participate in and experience this range of sounds is partly a product of Loida’s synesthesia. Music is a full- body experience for him, with sounds often invoking involuntary sensations of color, texture, or even taste.
Loida often writes and arranges for his projects and ensembles (the Cuban/Brazilian band INÃ, jazz quintet Mojubá, chamber-folk band Night Tree), and his music has been featured in film, ads, and dance performances. His interdisciplinary projects aim at breaking down artistic barriers. The evening-length solo-project Recital of Dedications incorporates speech, visual media, and music into a series of dedications to individuals, historical moments, and more. In 2018, he released the album Bach LIVE!, featuring J.S. Bach’s music arranged for percussion. Loida’s 2019 release, Wallflower, marks his solo-album debut, and also provides the clearest distillation of his voice as a composer to date. Loida’s discography continues to grow with singles, EP’s, and full-length albums featuring vibraphone and electronics to solo piano.
Loida has toured internationally as a featured artist at Korrö, Sweden’s largest folk music festival, and played some of the most prestigious music festivals in the U.S. such as Spoleto, New World Festival, the Exit Zero jazz festival, Caramoor American Roots Festival, and Round Top Music Festival. He has performed with groups such as Alarm Will Sound, Castle of Our Skins, Parsonsfield, the Callithumpian Consort, Tonina Saputo, Fabiola Mendez, Veronica Robles, Taylor Ashton, Alkinoos Ioannidis, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, The New Bedford Symphony, and MassOpera.
As an educator, Loida shares his scores and deep rhythmic knowledge with students of all ages. In 2017, he received his Master’s Degree in Classical Percussion from New England Conservatory.
Melissa Weikart
Melissa Weikart is a French/American vocalist, pianist, composer, and improviser currently based in Strasbourg, FR. Her musical approach is shaped by her passion for experimental vocal harmony and formative training as a classical pianist. Melissa’s solo songwriting project has been described as a playfully intimate dialogue between voice and piano, inviting listeners into a rich, raw world of twisted melodies and exposed dissonance. After releasing her EP Coffee and live album Testing All My Memories, she has released her debut full length album Here, There, on Northern Spy Records in (New York) in May 2022. She is the recipient of the 2022 Nancy Jazz Pulsations Emerging Artist prize and the 2023 Concours National de Jazz à la Défense Instrumentalist prize.
Melissa enjoys collaborating with artists across many disciplines. Upon her arrival in Strasbourg, she formed Beatrice Melissa, a duo making left-field electronic pop, who released their first EP Surprise in March 2023 on Midnight Special Records (Paris). She has shared the stage with Carla Kihlstedt, performing in her large ensemble projects Necessary Monsters (2021) and Black Inscription (2019), and was composer in residence for Kickbal, the San Francisco contemporary dance company. She also DJs, hosting her monthly radio show "Effet Désirable" on Z·est Radio and has mixed on The Lot Radio (New York) and Tsugi Radio (Paris).
While pursuing her Master’s in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory in Boston (M.M. ’18), Melissa studied with Carla Kihlstedt, Anthony Coleman, Dominique Eade, Ran Blake, and Hankus Netsky, and co-founded the collective Students Advocating for Gender Equity.
Jakub Rojek
For more than two decades, Jakub Rojek has been involved in cross-over performance, composition, and improvisation. His expertise spans non-idiomatic and trans-idiomatic improvisation, its development, application, and pedagogical aspect. His has been awarded prizes and scholarships at International Composition Competition in Darmstadt, Germany, Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, New England Conservatory, and performed in venues such as Jordan Hall in Boston, Steinway Hall in NYC, Spectrum NYC, Crowder Hall in Tucson, Chopin Theatre in Chicago, and Krakow Philharmonic. His works have been featured at “Oh My Ears” New Music Festival in Phoenix, Tocalo Tucson and documented on five album releases. Rojek has received commissions from visual artist Karine Laval, Grammy-nominated multi-reedman Aaron Kruziki, Polish soprano Milena Lange, Self-Imposed Exile, Javelinas, Sentient Lacuna, and percussionist Michael Pratt.
Emily Xander
Emily Xander is a Jazz Vocalist born in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. She has had a passion for singing since a young age, and began her study of Jazz and Classical music at Cabrillo College in Aptos, CA nearly ten years ago, performing regularly in numerous musical shows and productions. Soon after, she was awarded a scholarship to The School For Music Vocations in Creston, Iowa, where she entered into an intensive three-year program studying jazz voice, classical voice, jazz piano, classical piano, and arranging. Her jazz ensemble traveled locally and throughout the US and Canada performing original arrangements. From Iowa, Emily moved to New York City where she gigged at local clubs and enjoyed the rich arts culture before being accepted to New England Conservatory of Music the following Fall. She studied in Boston for a short time when her calling for teaching and performing won her over and she chose to move to Tucson in October, 2018 to focus on teaching and performing and enjoying the wonderful desert lifestyle.