The good news is that KlezCalifornia, the East Bay organization with the mission of bolstering Yiddish culture and music, is back in the festival business.
The even better news is that KlezCalYidFest, the organization’s first major live and in-person program since the advent of the pandemic, represents a torch-passing transition as a new generation of leadership emerges.
With an energetic new director at the helm, 29-year-old accordionist Dmitri Gaskin, KlezCalifornia is embracing the veteran musicians who built the local klezmer scene while showcasing a younger cohort determined to take the tradition into new territory.
“Dmitri’s not even 30 yet, and he just gets stuff done,” said Veretski Pass accordionist Josh Horowitz, a foundational figure in the local klezmer world and longtime KlezCalifornia board member.
Running Sept. 12-14 at the Finnish Hall in Berkeley, the three-day KlezCalYidFest includes nightly concerts, music and dance workshops, lectures and a general celebration of all things Yiddishkeit.
The festival will kick off Sept. 12 with a triple bill featuring acclaimed Yiddish singer Anthony Russell accompanied by Gaskin and fiddler Zoë Aqua, whose new album “In a Sea of Stars” gathers live recordings with Romanian musicians from her Transylvanian Synagogue Tour.
They’ll be followed by the Krekhts, a recent addition to the Bay Area klezmer menagerie, and Saul Goodman’s Klezmer Brass, a horn-laden ensemble heard often at Bay Area simchas and monthly at the Cheeseboard in Berkeley.
Sept. 13, a Saturday evening, includes a double bill featuring the Bay Area-rooted trio Baymele playing selections from a recently released album of instrumental klezmer music, “Sapling.” Baymele is composed of Gaskin on accordion, Matthew Stein on violin and Misha Khalikulov on cello.
The album was co-produced by the New York vocalist and accordionist Chaia, who will perform her own brand of Yiddish electronic music on the second half of the double bill.
“I flew out to work with Baymele in the studio,” Chaia said. “That was amazing. I’m a big fan of Dmitri [Gaskin] and it was an honor to be able to produce their album. Zoë Aqua is a longtime collaborator, and Veretski Pass is a longtime inspiration. Growing up I was always listening to their music, always trying to emulate what Josh [Horowitz was] playing. Klezmer is a very small world.”
Chaia released her debut album in June, “Yiddish Electronic,” which combines her love of spelunking in Jewish archives with state-of-the-art technology. She’s best known as a leading force on the dance-driven kleztronica scene, but her Finnish Hall set will focus on vintage Yiddish songs and her use of samples gleaned from the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research “and various Yiddishists around the world.”
“I’ve gathered a library of material around each song, and woven in are these archival recordings and interviews and Talmudic style commentary on the piece,” she said. “I play on a sampler with a lot of buttons, each button has an audio file, and I sing the song on top of them.”
Chaia is one of the artists offering 90-minute afternoon workshops Saturday and Sunday. She’ll be teaching Yiddish song for aspiring singers (of any level) both days.
Violinists Cookie Segelstein of Veretski Pass and Zoë Aqua, co-founder of the klezmer groups Tsibele and Farnakht, will teach sessions on instrumental klezmer, and Montreal-based Yiddish dance expert Avia Moore will offer folk dancing instruction.
In co-presentations with New Lehrhaus, Yiddishkayt executive director Robert Adler Peckerar will lecture on “The Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov,” and Russell will offer an overview of Yiddish song with a listening session titled “A Heritage of Sound.”
The festival culminates Sunday with two afternoon workshops, followed at 7 p.m. by a tantshoyz, a dance hall party — with dance lessons from Moore, a Montreal-based Yiddish dance expert, and music by a group of musicians fronted by Veretski Pass. Admission is free for those who buy workshop tickets on either day.
By combining Yiddish culture pioneers with younger artists, KlezCalYidFest speaks directly to KlezCalifornia’s new mission.
But Gaskin emphasized that the nonprofit has always tried to inspire young audiences and artists.
“The organization has done a phenomenal job over the last two decades,” Gaskin said. “That’s how I became a klezmer musician, through their support.”
Gaskin has no shortage of pep. He’s a member of three bands performing at KlezCalYidFest, and he has become a significant force on the international klezmer scene.
A Berkeley High alum who graduated in 2013, he dropped out of Stanford University after several months to develop the app-connecting tech behind a startup he co-founded, Branch Metrics. That landed him on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2015, while still a teenager.
These days, when he’s not playing klezmer, he’s running a 5-acre apple farm in Watsonville.
His mission with KlezCalifornia is to “bring in some younger energy,” he said.
“It’s interesting and challenging…the scene here started more than 50 years ago and we’re lucky that many of those founders are still active,” he said. “But we have to attract young musicians and audiences.”