About the Jewish Music Festival

The mission of the Jewish Music Festival is to present music that celebrates the Jewish experience and explores what it means to be Jewish in a multicultural world. The Festival produces creative and entertaining programs, challenges stereotypes, and fosters engagement with the broader community.

The Jewish Music Festival is a program of the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay (JCC East Bay)

Staff · National Artistic Advisors · Steering Committee · Programming Committee &#183

STAFF

Eleanor Shapiro, Director 2004 –present; Co-Director JMF 1997-2003

Former Development Director, The Crowden School & Crowden Center for Music in the Community; Public Relations Officer, San Francisco Municipal Railway; Public Information Officer, San Francisco Public Library; Staff Writer, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. Community Outreach for SF Jewish Film Festival and the Magnes Museum; former singer/performer with Young Audiences (a program that brings music to public schools); teacher and journalist, based in Jerusalem, 1983-1990. BA, History and Judaic and Near East Studies, Oberlin College; MA, Journalism, UC Berkeley. Currently a PhD student in Jewish Studies, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.

Brian Garrick, Associate Director, 2008 – present

Brian Garrick earned his MA in Jewish Studies from Emory University focusing on contemporary Jewish philosophy and Jewish cultural studies. He also holds a BA in Women’s Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He currently serves on the board of the Mission Minyan, an all-denominational community of young Jews. Brian formerly organized Jewish educational and cultural programs at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. He has served on the board of the Hub, an SF-based organization that presents cutting edge performing arts programs that reflect the evolution of Jewish arts, culture, community and identity.

Marjorie Wolf, Executive Director, JCC East Bay

Twenty years experience in health care management, including independent health care consultant worth with USAID, government officials and health care leaders in Eastern Europe on strategic planning, hospital operations, health care delivery systems and financial systems. Former interim director Judah L. Magnes Jewish Museum; president, Operation Dignity, Oakland, a five million dollar program serving homeless veterans and their families; past president Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay; past president of Woman Health Care Executives of Northern California.

up to top

National Artistic Advisors

Michael Alpert is internationally known for his performances and recordings of klezmer music with Brave Old World, Kapelye and other groups. A research associate with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, he is considered a major authority on traditional Eastern European Jewish music and dance. Alpert is the Emmy Award-winning musical director of the PBS Great Performances special Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler’s House. He was executive producer of Perlman’s two recordings of klezmer music on Angel/EMI, and directed the subsequent international concert tours.

Theodore Bikel (Honorary) made his concert debut at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1956 in a folk song program. Every year since then, he has performed in concerts throughout the U.S.A., Canada, and Europe; including appearances with more than a dozen symphony orchestras. Mr. Bikel has recorded 20 record albums mostly for the Elektra label in addition to releases on Columbia, Peter Pan, and Reprise and was a co-founder of the Newport Folk Festival. His book Folksongs and Footnotes, published by Meridian Books (World Publishing) in 1961, had three reprint editions. He is also internationally acclaimed as a film and theater actor.

Yair Dalal is a leading figure on the Israeli and international world music scene, both as a soloist and in collaboration with his ensemble Al Ol. Born in Israel in 1955 to Iraqi parents, he has performed worldwide with artists including the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra with Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, specializing in original music inspired by music of the Middle East.

Ronnie Gilbert is a former member of the celebrated group, The Weavers, which brought folk rhythms and social activism to the mainstream, even as they were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. She has worked for many years as an actor, including work with Joseph Chaikin in The Open Theater and as a solo performer. She has more than two dozen CDs to her credit, as a soloist and with other artists.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is professor of Performance Studies at NYU. Her teaching, research, and writing encompass the aesthetics of everyday life, world’s fairs, museum theater, tourist productions, food and performance, Jewish performance, folklore, and ethnography.

Frank London is a Grammy-award winning musician and composer who plays trumpet and keyboards as a member of the internationally renowned klezmer ensemble the Klezmatics. He has performed with John Zorn, LL Cool J, Mel Torme, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Mark Ribot, Maurice El Medioni, Gypsy legend Esma Redzepova, and many others. His original work can be found on almost a dozen CDs. His film credits include John Sayles’ The Brother From Another Planet and Men With Guns. He has been featured on HBO’s Sex And The City, at the North Sea Jazz Festival and the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, and was a co-founder of Les Miserables Brass Band and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.

Francesco Spagnolo is Head of Research at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley. Formerly the Executive Director of the American Sephardi Federation at the Center for Jewish History in New York. Since moving to the U.S. from his native Italy, he has worked as the Music Curator of the Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley) and as a Lecturer in the Music and Literature departments of the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1997, he founded Yuval Italia, the Italian Center for the Study of Jewish Music. In 2001, the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem jointly issued his groundbreaking CD anthology, Italian Jewish Musical Traditions. He is a Research Fellow of the Jewish Music Research Center (Jerusalem) and recently completed his PhD in Musicology at Hebrew University.

Cantor Ramon Tasat sings in Hebrew, Ladino, Spanish, Italian and English. He holds a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in Voice Performance. A featured artist in international music festivals, he has produced 9 recordings and a book, Sephardic Songs for All. Dr. Tasat is an expert and a scholar in Sephardic music, and is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to teach Sephardic music at universities throughout the country. He has performed on stages throughout the world, including at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Israeli Embassy; Italian Consulate (NY) Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island; Harvard University, and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

up to top

Steering Committee

Rachel Biale
Regional Director, Progressive Jewish Alliance
Former Director, Community Education, Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, 1999  2006,
Former Senior Clinician, Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay; author of Women and Jewish Law, published by Schocken Books, 1984. The book received the Kenneth Smilen Award of the Jewish Museum, New York in 1985 in the category of Jewish Thought, and was re-issued in a new edition in 1995. She was born and raised on Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin, Israel. BA and MA Jewish History, UCLA; MSW, Yeshiva University, NY.

Denah S. Bookstein
Artist
Former Board Member, JCCEB (formerly Berkeley Richmond JCC), social worker; gallery owner. Former chair, subcommittee on disabilities, SF Jewish Family and Children’s Service; participant, Mitzvah Care Program – a joint program of SFJFCS and the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center. BS, MA, MSW, University of Michigan.

Arthur Goldman
Vice President, Ritchie Commercial Corporation
Past president, JCCEB (formerly BRJCC); trustee, board member and past president, Congregation Beth El, Berkeley; former board member Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay. Former assistant director, National Commission on Urban Problems, Washington, D.C. (a Presidential Commission); former planner Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C. BA, Brown University; Masters of City Planning, Harvard University.

Tracy Lutz
Operations Manager, San Francisco Symphony
Has over 12 years of experience in production management and finance in live music, events and film / television industries. She currently serves as operations manager for the San Francisco Symphony and has worked at Chochmat HaLev, Bill Graham Presents, Lucasfilm, House of Blues, Disney and MTV networks. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.B.A. from Rollins College.

Tony Phillips
Attorney
San Francisco native; twenty years experience in general business litigation practice, with emphasis on legal malpractice and insurance coverage disputes; former Senior Editor of the Stanford Law Review, and federal appellate court clerk. Musician playing mandolin, fiddle, guitar and related instruments with various Jewish music, world music, bluegrass, and other groups; member, Steering Committee of the San Francisco Mandolin Festival; legal advisor, KlezCalifornia, an annual Yiddish music and cultural program. BA, Harvard College; JD, Stanford Law School.

Janis Plotkin
Programmer, Mill Valley Film Festival; Film Curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
An internationally recognized leader in the field of independent Jewish subject cinema; former Executive Artistic Director, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 1982 – 2002; instrumental in building diverse audiences that reached 35,000 attendees; programmer for KQED broadcasts of Jewish subject cinema; co-producer of the first Jewish Film Festival in Moscow, 1990; co-producer of the Jewish Film Festival, Madrid, commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Jewish Expulsion. Co-author, editor and publisher, Independent Jewish Film. B.A., Social Welfare, University of Washington-Seattle; dual Masters in Social Work and Jewish Community Studies, USC, and the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. Former Instructor, Stanford University, Honorary Doctorate, Hebrew Union College, 2001.

Jonathan Reinis
Tony Award winning Producer, Jonathan Reinis Productions, 1975
Recent productions include Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues; Josh Kornbluth’s Love & Taxes; Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam (Tony Award, 2003); Sam Sheppard’s The Late Henry Moss; Dame Edna; Ennio, His Way; Sandra Bernhardt; Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile; John Leguizamo’s premiere of Freak; the award-winning Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde; and Forever Tango. Forever Tango, Freak, Def Poetry Jam and Dame Edna transferred to Broadway after their successful San Francisco runs at Reinis’ theatre, Theatre on the Square, which he built in 1982 in San Francisco and operated for more than twenty years. BA, Anthropology, UC Berkeley, (Phi Beta Kappa).

Laura Sheppard
Director of Events, Mechanics’ Institute Library, SF 1999 –
Former producer, Jewish Music Festival, 1998-99; past producer, opening parties for the Degas Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1988) and Earth Day, Times Square and other locations (1990-1992) as well as other public festivals and events for more than 25 years. Former actor and recipient of two NEA Awards; former NEA theatre site reviewer. BFA, Theatre, Boston University’s School of Fine Arts.

Julie Sherman
Outreach Coordinator, Jewish Music Festival, 2005
Former program director, Community Health Partnership of Santa Clara County, a non-profit health organization working with a low-income population; quilt display coordinator, NAMES Project, Israel Tour, 1990; lay leader of the Jewish community in Santa Cruz, 1982 – 1995; former board member of Aquarian Minyan.

up to top

Programming Committee

Carole Baden, Program Associate, JMF 2005; recipient Dean’s Talent Award, Oberlin Conservatory; Sephardic and Mizrahi music specialist.

Steve Baker, Director, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse and the Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music.

Ben Brinner, Professor of Ethnomusicology, UC Berkeley, Department of Music.

Paul Hamburg, Judaica Librarian, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

Laura Sheppard, Events Director, Mechanics Institute Library, San Francisco. Former producer of Jewish Music Festival (1998, 1999); Board Member, KlezCalifornia.

Ed Silberman, Early Childhood Educator; folk, klezmer and Yiddish music specialist.

Dore Stein, Producer/Host of “Tangents”, a KALW radio program that explores world and roots music, and creative jazz hybrids; former music director at KKSF, where he was a five time Gavin Award nominee, a major industry award recognizing excellence in radio music programming.

Susan Swerdlow, Conductor of choral music at the College Preparatory School in Oakland. She also trains choruses for Oakland Opera Theater and Berkeley Opera. Former music director of Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus.

Ilya Tovbis, Program Director, Jewish Community Center of the East Bay. Former Outreach and Operations Coordinator, Stern Grove Festival, former Volunteer Coordinator, Mill Valley Film Festival.

Alexandra Wall, former Staff Writer at J Weekly, the Bay Area’s Jewish newspaper, with special interest in the arts and inter-cultural relations.

Raya Zion, Workforce Development Manager, San Mateo County Central Labor Council; Fundraising Committee Chair, Chen Shapira Jewish Culture Fund; Israeli-born specialist in Sephardic, Mizrahi and Arabic music.

up to top

The Jewish Music Festival is a program of the
Jewish Community Center of the East Bay (JCCEB)