The YAM Ensemble brings together 30 brilliant young musicians from Türkiye, Greece, and Germany to explore a fascinating musical heritage. For centuries, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities around the Mediterranean and Black Sea shared and exchanged music, song and dance, each community contributing its own local style. “YAM,” which means “sea” in Yiddish and Hebrew, is an homage to the intertwined Greco-Turkish, Sephardic, and Yiddish cultural and musical traditions of the region. Today, thanks to old recordings and living master musicians, these shared cultural expressions serve as an example of harmonious co-existence, highlighting the universal human need to play, sing, and dance.

Under the leadership of Ilya Shneyveys and Sarah Myerson, the 30-piece YAM Ensemble creates and performs suites that move seamlessly between intricate arrangements and playful improvisation, reviving and reinventing this rich musical heritage for today.