mikveh
Mikveh began when Obie-winning playwright Eve Ensler called Alicia Svigals to put together an all-star group of female klezmer musicians to join a host of celebrity performers at her gala event, V-Day in New York. As a founding member of the Klezmatics, Svigals was well-positioned to do just that, and she called singer Adrienne Cooper, accordionist Lauren Brody and bass player Nicki Parrott. The group rocked the house at their very first performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom Theater and then at Madison Square Garden for the second V-Day, sharing the stage with Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Lily Tomlin, Glenn Close, Phoebe Snow, and Brooke Shields among others. Soon afterwards trumpeter/vocalist Susan Hoffman Watts joined the group and kicked up the excitement one more notch.
Since then, Mikveh has brought their unique woman-inflected spin on Jewish roots music, both traditional and brand-new, to audiences around the U.S. and Europe. In live concerts and on their eponymous debut CD, they create music that draws on the experiences and traditions of Jewish women, singing songs about spiritual fervor, forbidden love, pregnancy and miscarriage, hard work, a bas mitzvah, domestic violence, and powerful women everywhere. They combine rare finds from the folk tradition on surprisingly contemporary topics, with new Yiddish and English songs written in collaboration with lyricists who range in age from twenty-something to eighty-something, keeping the tradition alive and propelling it forward. And they leaven their arrangements with the ecstatic energy of old-time klezmer dance music, performed by some of the very best instrumentalists in the klezmer world.
Mikveh, the band, is named in tribute to the traditional women's mikveh (ritual bath), the place of monthly immersion marking the cycles of women's lives.
Mikveh Special Programs
Mikveh is comprised of five individuals with a wide range of skills and experiences... we have a variety of programs already prepared and listed below, but presenters are also welcome to devise workshops that fit their needs and draw on our abilities. We are composers and arrangers; teachers who work with everyone from preschoolers to conservatory students, junior high assemblies to adult ed classes; we are lecturers and published writer as well.
Family programs
Chagall’s Kaleidoscope (created by Mikveh vocalist Adrienne Cooper as a commission by the Jewish Museum of NY.) With a narration from Chagall’s autobiography of his early years in Vitebsk, St. Petersburg & Paris, this multi-media concert has been seen throughout Europe, can be performed in versions for adult or family audiences - with Chagall’s work projected over the songs and stories. Mikveh’s Klezmer Party, an interactive performance for preschoolers with emphasis on clapping, singing and dancing along.
Any of the other Mikveh programs listed below can also be tailored to a younger audience.
Lecture
Demonstrations on Yiddish song and klezmer music history -- complete with hilarious stories by trumpeter Susan Watts, descendant of a long and colorful klezmer dynasty.
Song workshops
Your congregation, student assembly, or concert audience pre- or post-show can become an instant chorus, learning and singing Yiddish songs together in an unforgettable communal experience.
Instrument workshops
Hands-on instruction in klezmer for instrumentalists of all levels and abilities, which can culminate in the creation and performance of a rocking synagogue, school and/or community klezmer band. We’ve formed groups with up to 150 players!
Synagogue programs:
A participatory Shabbaton program with beautiful nigunim and Yiddish folk songs, many in singable English translations, some in the original.
Evocative Havdalah celebration concert with dance 'til you drop party to follow.
Purim, Simchas Torah and Chanukah programs that can be incorporated into services, followed by a concert/dance party. Can also include a dance instructor/leader and a “Jewish juggler.”
Rosh Hodesh program geared especially to women.
" Mikveh - which takes its name from the post-menstrual ritual bath used to "cleanse" very Orthodox Jewish women - keeps one foot firmly rooted in tradition, while using the other to traverse a wide expanse of sonic territory. It's virtually impossible not to get caught up in the joyful accordion swirl that Lauren Brody imparts to Sorele's Bas Mitzveh, while the air of melancholy she and violinist Alicia Svigals bring to Gutn ovnt Brayne is just as affecting. Vocalist Adrienne Cooper provides the mortar that holds it all together, ranging deftly from quiet meditation (on Royz, royz) to wide-eyed wonder (Vos vet zayn), trilling and growling tales that link heaven to the tenement stoop with astonishing ease.
" Violinist Alicia Svigals...is a stunningly gifted player. She is equally capable of precise classical virtuosity as well as emotional abandon, and she delivered some of the concert's most transcendent moments...A succession of superlative solos...served to spiral the music into stratospheric realms unimagined in the music's original homeland .
" Lauren Brody (contributed) a multiplicity of styles, virtuosic technique and literate improvisation.. .vocal elegance..
" Nicki Parrott's bass lead transformed a conservative audience into an enthusiastic mob demanding double encores .