Klezmer in the Kitchen
vol. 2

ALICIA SVIGALS, Composer/violinist/vocalist, is the world's leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, who she co-directed for seventeen years. She has played and composed for violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, singer/songerwriters Debbie Friedman, Diane Birch, Gary Lucas and Najma Akhtar, and many others.

She has appeared on David Letterman, MTV, PBS' Great Performances, on NPR's Prairie Home Companion and Weekend Edition and WNYC’s New Sounds, and on the soundtrack for the L-Word. Svigals was awarded the Foundation for Jewish Culture's annual New Jewish Music Network Music Commission for her original live score to the 1918 film the Yellow Ticket and a Trust for Mutual Understanding grant to bring that work to Poland, and she has been a LABA Fellow and an NEA MacDowell Fellow. Last year she released Beregovski Suite, a CD with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer exploring klezmer melodies collected in the early 20th century by Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovski.
Most recently, Svigals has collaborated with pianist/composer Donald Sosin on new scores for the 1920’s silent films, THE ANCIENT LAW and CITY WITHOUT JEWS, recently released in new restorations. Svigals and Sosin also perform the scores live to screenings of the film.

DONALD SOSIN is one of the world's foremost silent film musicians, bringing 50 years of experience to major film festivals—New York, Telluride, Bologna, Pordenone, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, TriBeCa, Denver—and to MoMA, MOMI, BAM, MFA Boston, the Berlin Filmmuseum, and Moscow's prestigious Lumière Gallery, often performing with his singer/percussionist wife Joanna Seaton, with whom he has scored dozens of films for live screenings and DVD/BluRay, including Milestone's release of Filibus. Other venues include the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, Asia's largest film and music festival in Jecheon, South Korea, the Thailand Silent Film Festival in Bangkok, the University of Calgary, and the Banff Center.

They appear frequently at Yale, Brown, and Emory Universities, and the National Gallery of Art. Commissions include two songs for the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Donald’s orchestral score for the 1916 Sherlock Holmes was premiered in Odessa on the Potemkin steps for 15,000 spectators. Other scores for Milestone include Heart of the Hills, M'liss, The Big Stakes, Cut to the Chase, and Shoes.  With Alicia Svigals Donald has scored two other Jewish-themed films: The Ancient Law and The City Without Jews, both of which are available on disc and for live booking. Donald studied piano with Kyriena Siloti and holds composition degrees from the University of Michigan and Columbia University. He has taught songwriting and silent film music workshops with Joanna Seaton in many schools, universities (Syracuse, Denver, and San Francisco), conducts master classes for professionals.