Christina Crowder

Klezmer Accordion

 

 

25 Years of Performance, Teaching, & Research

I’ve been performing and researching Jewish music for nearly thirty years, beginning in Budapest, Hungary in 1993, continuing with a Fulbright grant to Romania to document Jewish music in 1999, and since 2002 with an active research, teaching, and performing career in the US. I’m the Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute. Find out more about our work here.

My Studio is Open!

I am currently accepting students for Private Lessons. You can schedule a one-off session to work on a specific piece or technique, or let’s work out an ongoing schedule of sessions that fits your learning pace and schedule.

Accordion Group Sessions are a great way to  learn new tunes, study the klezmer accordion masters like Max Yankowitz & Mishka Ziganoff, and to work on accordion-specific klezmer technique.

The ongoing seminar Ashkenazic Dance for Klezmer Musicians is a monthly session that will tackle one of the Ashkenazic dance genres and its associated music. We listen to historical recordings to understand tempo, rhythm, & texture, we break down and embody the basic physical dance movements, and then play together to ground this experience in our playing. 

Access My Studio Page

My studio page is closed until the next seminar begins in the spring of 2023. Use the Contact Form to be in touch! 

Christina Crowder Accordion

Photo: Lloyd Wolf

Alicia Svigals with Christina Crowder

Performance

Christina is a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye—an ensemble dedicated to researching and performing traditional eastern European Jewish music. Her current projects is the klezmer chamber music ensemble Bivolița, and she performs regularly with Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentschen, the Dave Levitt Trio, Susan Watts, Alicia Svigals and many other North American klezmorim.

Teaching

Christina has led workshops and coaching sessions in Europe and North America, and has been on faculty at KlezKanada, Yiddish New York, Klezmer Paris, Yiddish Sumer Weimar, among others.

 Please be in touch if you’d like to schedule a Zoom lesson! It’s so much fun to be working with klezmer accordionists around the world!

 

Research

From 1999 to 2001 Christina and her husband John DeMetrick pursued Fulbright grants in Romania, working with elderly violinists who had played music for Jewish communities before the Second World War. The pair made field recordings of those musicians and also pursued archival and library sources for Jewish material and an understanding of the local influences on Jewish musical styles. Christina continues this research with a project to document connections between Jewish, Bessarabian, and Greek music through NYU Abu Dhabi, and she is  the co-founder and Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute.

Workshops

My current workshop program centers around Klezmer Institute’s Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP). Find out more about the Trampled Manuscripts: The Lost Klezmer Music of the An-ski Expeditions at the Klezmer Institute website here. These workshops are a wonderful way to explore an exciting, newly available repertoire. 

I am also excited to offer the workshop
“Ashkenazic Dance for Klezmer Musicians,” to help musicians understand how rhythm and tempo support the physical impulses for the four main Ashkenazic dance genres through physical movement and playing. Contact me to arrange a workshop in your area!

Theater

Christina was Music Director and performing artist in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of the Broadway play “Indecent” in 2019, and reprised both roles at he Artist Repertory Theater production in Portland, OR in the winter of 2020.

“Christina Crowder is truly a master musician and storyteller who brings places and melodies lost to time dramatically to life through weaving a spell of song. She doesn’t tell you about it as much as you feel it in her presence. Here in Ashland, we had a packed house concert of 80 people that were completely held in thrall by the evening (when they were not dancing). Part of Christina’s gift is in teaching and demonstrating the intersection of cultures within cultures that made this music possible in the first place (i.e. the relationships between the Roma, Greek, and Jewish musicians in early 20th century Moldovia). A gift to the Jewish community and beyond.”

Rabbi Joshua Boettiger, Temple Emek Shalom, Ashland, OR

Klezmer Institute

Christina is the Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute.

Klezmer Institute is a digital-first organization founded to support Ashkenazic expressive culture through research, teaching, publishing, and programming. Ashkenazic expressive culture encompasses the musical and physical expression of eastern European Jewish culture through music, song, and dance. Klezmer Institute projects use digital humanities tools to define and document the unique musical heritage of the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe, and to increase communication and collaboration between professional and amateur musicians, dancers, and scholars throughout the world. Klezmer Institute champions Ashkenazic expressive culture through digital preservation and contemporary performance as an important means to understand Jewish culture in the past, and as a springboard to inspire new generations to engage with an essential cultural legacy.

I wanted to thank you and your ensemble again for such a lovely lunch time concert with us. It was really well done, and very much appreciated. I keep hearing praise about the event! Please pass my gratitude along to your ensemble!.

LAUREN DICKEL — Adult Engagement Program Manaer, Central Synagogue, New York

The Wallingford Public Library was delighted to feature Bivolita in its 2015 inaugural International Music Coffeehouse concert series. The performance was sensational! The musicians delivered an engaging show and the audience did not want it to end.

JANE FISHER — Direcor, Wallingford Public Library