Special Presentation
Direct from New York and Israel
Balkan Beat Box

A quasi-circus experience that is as much stage show as concert, Balkan Beat Box is well-known for their energetic and unpredictable live performances that interweave the organic sounds of Israel, Turkey, Spain, Morocco and Bulgaria with urban electronic grooves. Dubbed "Mediterranean dancehall," this Balkan-inspired electronic urban folk with hip hop beats is a glorious, infectious fusion of musical treatments that defies categorization.

BBB - the brainchild of ex-Gogol Bordello member Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat of Firewater and Big Lazy - performs with a core of six musicians, collaborating with artists from Bulgaria, Morocco, Spain, Israel and Turkey. In a modular audio-visual show, they incorporate electronic esthetics in a performance that becomes a high-energy "musical dialogue" between the audience and performers.

Born in the small Israeli city of Jaffa, Kaplan picked up clarinet at an early age listening to Egyptian pop, Russian and Moroccan music on the radio. Eschewing classical music, he learned to play klezmer by ear and was later transfixed by the transatlantic currents of jazz, rock and industrial music. Muskat also grew up in Israel and gained notoriety at 18 as both a punk-rock drummer and producer of Mediterranean singers in his basement. By 19, he was playing with the biggest rock bands in the country. Today they are based in New York and cite Boban Markovi?, Rachid Taha, Fanfare Ciocarlia, Manu Chao and Charlie Parker amongst their musical influences.

Not coincidentally, BBB makes connections that politics often keep separate. Jewish, Gypsy, Arabic and American are united by hip hop beats, percussive dancing rhythms and dancehall toasts. Utopian? You bet. Visionary? See for yourself! www.balkanbeatbox.com

"A magnificent mash-up melding music from every conceivable corner of the globe and its history" The Chicago Sun Times

Closing Night
Canada's #1 Klezmer Band
The Flying Bulgars
Celebrating their 20th Anniversary and new CD

This Canadian band formerly known as The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band is one of the most adventurous and accomplished klezmer groups in North America. Led by the incomparable trumpeter David Buchbinder, co-founder of Odessa Havana, the sextet combines a love for the tradition with a fearless commitment to experimentation, blending sounds of Tsarist Russian military bands, gypsy folk music, Hasidic religious song and Afro-American jazz with ease and virtuosity. Since their founding in 1987, The Flying Bulgars have toured across Canada and internationally. From the Folk on the Rocks Festival in Yellowknife to the WOMAD festival in Morcombe, England, to the Tollwood Festival in Munich, to the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in New York. They have recorded five CDs and have received two Juno nominations, and are still the only klezmer band to have created a music video, which received much airplay on MuchMusic.

Founder David Buchbinder has studied with some of the most accomplished jazz men around from Freddie Stone to Kenny Wheeler to Muhal Richard Abrams. A multi-talented performer, composer and cultural inventor, he is also a member of the Arabic fusion ensemble, MEDINA, and has recently founded a brass band playing music of the Roma (Gypsies). He has also composed the scores for six feature films, the animated short Stone of Folly (awarded the Cannes Film Festival Prix du Jury), and for theatre and modern dance.

With the remarkable talents of five additional acclaimed musicians: Victor Bateman (bass), Frank Botos (percussion), Tania Gill (piano), Peter Lutek (reed instruments) and Dave Wall (vocals), The Flying Bulgars are Canada's most prominent members of the international klezmer fraternity.
www.davidbuchbinder.ca | www.garycristall.com/bulgar.shtml

"Florid, frenzied, ostentatious... The musicianship is exhilaration, mixing the pinpoint precision of a symphony orchestra with a saloon air of unabashed abandon... Hitting all the emotional buttons at once, the Bulgars break through the other side of corn to posit klezmer as the wisest counsel on the planet."
The Beat

"Picture a Jewish wedding in a Gypsy camp in Bulgaria with a full moon after a few glasses of wine"
NOW Magazine, Toronto

"Voracious energy... They create feelings so powerful they can leave you winded... They take their audiences to the brink and back again without leaving anyone behind." Kitchener - Waterloo Record

Producing Gold Sponsor: Devonshire Properties
Supported by Jewish Family Service Agency
in honour of their Family Visionary and Visionary Donors

Direct from New York
Miri Levi: Mozart is my Homeboy! (can you Handel it?)

Miri Levi will perform oratorio and opera selections that will rock you like it's 1895 in this evening of opera designed to impress and delight experienced opera fans and newcomers alike. An emerging artist, Levi will be joined by singers from her home studio in New York - Anna Kirkland and Pérez Gonzalez - to dazzle with duets including Rossini's delightfully silly Comic Duet of Two Cats and staged scenes from opera favourites like Mozart's masterpiece The Marriage of Figaro. Levi will be accompanied by the talented Gary Norden, who has partnered many of the great opera stars including the Metropolitan Opera's Robert Peters and Jerome Hines. Be prepared for a night that will shatter your conceptions about opera and leave you begging for more!

A native Vancouverite and recent graduate of The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, the multi-talented Miri Levi, the daughter of Lisa Nemetz, our festival's honoured namesake, has toured Europe singing in The Marriage of Figaro, Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball) and Carmen as well as performing internationally with the classical ensemble Festive Voices.

Vancouver Premiere
Socalled
With Katie Moore, Allen Watsky and guests

Given the recent resurgence of klezmer and the number of artists that are cleverly fusing other musical forms with it, surely it was just a matter of time before someone created the unimaginable: "hip hop klezmer." Enter Montrealer Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled.

Growing up Jewish in Ottawa and nearby Chelsea, Klezmer had no part in Dolgin's childhood. As a youth, he played piano and accordion in salsa, gospel and funk bands, and discovered hip hop as a university student at McGill. It was while searching for old records to sample that he discovered Yiddish theatrical recordings, igniting his hybrid musical form and inspiring song and album titles like The Jew Funk, Hip Hop Khasene and The Socalled Seder.

Now a Montreal-based musician, photographer, magician, filmmaker and writer, Socalled rocks with David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness!, sings with Toronto-based Beyond the Pale and performs with his home-base band Shtreiml in Montreal, as well as with The Aleph Project based in LA. Touring Europe and North America, he has appeared on a dozen recordings as pianist, singer, arranger, rapper, writer and producer.

Accompanying him at Chutzpah! will be his "crew of mixed-up freaks and geniuses" from around the world, including Katie Moore (instrument) and Allen Watksy (instrument). www.socalledmusic.com

"All the elements of the classic mad artistic genius" Montreal Gazette

Producing Sponsor: Lloyd Baron

Canadian Premiere!
Edges: A Song Cycle

By Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
Starring Vincent Tong, Lauren Bowler, Matt Palmer, and Shira Elias
Directed by: Shane Snow
Musical Direction by Steven Greenfield
Produced by Josh Epstein

In 2005, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (www.pasekandpaul.com) —a pair of 19 year-old Musical Theatre undergrads—wrote Edges: a collection of songs about coming of age at the University of Michigan. Word of mouth and rave reviews followed and Edges has since been performed over 60 times across the US. Inspired by such works as Jacques Brel and Songs For A New World, Edgesis relevant, humorous, provocative, hip and contains the now famous “Facebook Song.”

Josh Epsteinhas has performed across the country in productions including The Lord Of The Rings (Mirvish) as well as Hairspray the movie. Lauren Bowler has just finished a successful run playing the lead in Gypsy at the Arts Club, where she has also appeared in FunnyGirl. Shira Elias returns to Chutzpah! after studying Musical Theatre at the University of California at Irvine. She will be appearing in West Side Story (Royal City) in April. Matt Palmer has been playing leading roles all over Vancouver in shows such as Jacques Brel, Forever Plaid, Suds, Urinetown, Beauty and The Beast, The Number 13 and most recently Company and Seussical. Vincent Tong has appeared in mega hits Mama Mia, Lord of the Rings, and High School Musical.
"Overflowing with talent and humor..." Miami Hurricane

Concert Double Bill
The Fringe Group and Noah Shilkin

The Fringe Group is a Vancouver-based percussion quartet embracing the cultural traditions of North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. Last summer, this cutting-edge ensemble performed a long-lost John Cage composition for FUSE at the Vancouver Art Gallery. For their Chutzpah! Members Jonathan Bernard, Martin Fisk, Brian Nesselroad and Daniel Tones communicate with many generations and many cultures, lending itself well to the multi-faceted, multicultural nature of the contemporary music scene.

Australian born, Vancouver based, Noah Shilkin is a recording/performance artist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer who has worked with artists such as Alanis Morissette, Bryan Adams and AC/DC and composed for the likes of Disney, Nike and Calvin Klein. He was keyboardist and songwriter for legendary Australian cult band Mother Goose and his songwriting catalogue boasts 300 songs including the Voodoo Opera Under a Mardi Gras Moon. His live show is a totally unique experience encompassing an irreverent, poignant and humorous mix of original music, songs and stories. "...Lou Reed meets Victor Borge." www.noahshilkin.com | www.brumbymusic.com

Special Presentation
Direct from New York
Pharaoh's Daughter

Blending a psychedelic sensibility and a pan-Mediterranean sensuality, Basya Schechter leads the six world class musicians of Pharaoh's Daughter through swirling Hasidic chants, Mizrachi and Sephardi folk-rock, and spiritual stylings filtered through percussion, flute, strings and electronica. Cultivated by her Hasidic music background and a series of trips to the Middle East, Africa, Israel, Egypt, Central Africa, Turkey, Kurdistan and Greece, Schechter's sound is as eclectic as it is widely acclaimed.

Pharaoh's Daughter has toured extensively through America, Eastern and Western Europe, Greece and the UK and has performed at Lincoln Centre's Damrosch Park, Central Park's Summer Stage series and the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. When not touring or performing, Schechter plays darbuka, riq and frame drum as part of the B'nai Jeshurun music ensemble that accompanies Friday night services.

The latest Pharaoh's Daughter CD, Haran , is receiving rave reviews for its globally - informed sound that takes a journey from Hasidic Brooklyn to 70's psychedelia to streets in Morocco. www.pharaohsdaughter.com

"Have you ever wondered what would happen if Pink Floyd and PJ Harvey crossed paths in a cafe in Israel and subsequently took a road trip to South Africa? What if they met up with Radiohead in Morocco along the way? The result would be close to what you'll find in Haran, the latest achievement of Pharaoh's Daughter. Infusing an eclectic instrumental blend of traditional Judaic tunes with Arabic rhythm and African beats, Haran is an infectiously beautiful album full of haunting joy." newyorkcool.com

Producing Sponsor: Kathie and Harold Folk

Special Presentation
Vancouver Premiere
Direct from Argentina
Klezmer Buenos Aires: Lerner Moguilevsky Duo

Now on the international circuit, Argentina's Cesar Lerner and Marcel Moguilevsky are bringing audiences to their feet from Poland to Canada with a breathtaking intensity that must been seen and heard to be believed.

Virtuosic is the word that comes up most often to describe this powerhouse duo whose innovations on flutes, wooden flutes, bagpipe, duduk (wind instrument), clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano sax, harmonica, accordion, piano and percussion make the two of them sound like an orchestra as they unleash their ingenious blend of klezmer, Argentinean folk music, tango and jazz improvisation.

Born of Russian and Polish grandparents who immigrated to Argentina at the turn of the century, Lerner and Moguilevsky have been the main proponents of klezmer in that country for the past decade. Their three CDs describe a journey from the evocative Klezmer in Buenos Aires (1997), passing through an homage to the first Jewish settlers in Argentina with Basavilbaso (1999), to arrive at their third album, Shtil (2001) an intimate, inspired and improvisational fusing of musical genres that sounds at once ancient and contemporary.

Accompanying the duo will be Chutzpah! favourite, BC's own Boris Sichon on percussion.
www.lernermoguilevsky.com.ar

"Surrender yourself to their ecstatic joy...dance with it. Moguilevsky and Lerner are your hosts, satisfaction guaranteed." Contumancia Magazine

Producing Sponsor: Vicki Heller and Barbara Heller