Advanced Yiddish Song Workshop

Two Worlds of Yiddish Song – Hasidic Women’s Song & Yiddish Theater Divas

July 21 - 28, 2026; unstructured (free) day: July 25
10 a.m. - 1 p.m. & 3 - 6 p.m. | advanced

with Asya Vaisman Schulman, Sasha Lurje, Lorin Sklamberg & Patrick Farrell

This workshop explores two distinct and rarely paired threads of the Yiddish song repertoire – Hasidic women’s song and the Yiddish theater tradition – asking what, beneath their surface differences, makes a singing style truly yidish. Through repertoire study and vocal work, participants will move between the communal and the theatrical, the devotional and the spectacular, looking for the shared thread running through both.

The theater strand, led by Lorin Sklamberg and Sasha Lurje, follows the development of Yiddish theater song from the early 1900s through the 1970s. Through the repertoire of performers like Pepi Litman, Molly Picon, Isa Kremer, the Barry Sisters, Nekhama Lifshits, and Goldie Malavsky and the Malavsky Family, among others, we’ll trace the journey of the folk song as it moved onto the stage, absorbed the popular sounds of its era, and evolved into new forms while staying rooted in Yiddish musical sensibility. 

The Hasidic women’s strand, led by Asya Vaisman Schulman, draws on her extensive research into a living contemporary repertoire: songs written largely within the past fifty years by women inside the Hasidic communities of Satmar, Bobov, Pupa, Tosh, and other groups in New York, Jerusalem, Antwerp, and London. Performed only in all-female Hasidic contexts, these didactic songs are virtually unknown outside of the communities in which they were created. In this workshop, we’ll explore the songs’ intertextual references and performance contexts, as well as the cultural values that shape this repertoire.

Together, the two strands form a conversation about vocal technique and performance practice. Sasha Lurje will lead the work on vocal technique and style, guiding participants through the specific stylistic tools each tradition draws on – ornamentation, phrasing, vibrato, breath, and the relationship between text and melody – and asking how these differ between the trained stage performer and the community singer. The goal is not only to learn repertoire but to develop a more conscious understanding of what gives each style its character, and where, surprisingly, the two worlds meet.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Please note!
Although both the intermediate and advanced song workshops explore the same topics, they do so in different ways. The advanced version of this workshop is designed for singers with a strong foundation in vocal technique and some experience with Yiddish song. If you’re not sure which workshop is for you, please get in touch!

 

Workshop fee:
530 € Standard / 425 € Reduced / 740 € Sponsor / 180 € Under 18