Three women in the Jewish/Ladino/Klezmer genre: the Canadian/Czech Lenka Lichtenberg, the French vocalist Esther Lamandier and the American clarinetist Margot Leverett.
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Lenka Lichtenberg.
Lenka is a Canadian musician, composer and producer who draws from the rich, cross-cultural Toronto soundscapes in which she has long immersed herself to create her own unique global sound. Lenka’s album: Thieves of Dreams, is based on poems written by her grandmother while she was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II.
CD. Thieves of Dreams – Lenka Lichtenberg (2022). Video
2- Esther Lamandier.
A French soprano and harpist known for her explorations in early chant and monodic music. She is known to regularly accompany herself on the harp,vielle or portative organ. Esther Lamandier was born in 1946 in Saint-Raphaël, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France; her father’s family is Jewish, from Piatra Neamț in Romania. She is a specialist in both Assyrian and Sephardic Jewish songs, and the Hebrew biblical hymn transcriptions of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura.
CD. Romances Séfarades et Chants Araméens – Esther Lamandier. LABEL: Alienor (1985), code: AL 1012. Video
3- Margot Leverett.
When the American Margot Leverett was asked to participate in a Klezmer band in the making in 1985, she hardly knew what Klezmer was. She was a classically trained clarinetist who played rock and avant-garde jazz, but she enthusiastically jumped into this adventure and the band The Klezmatics was born. The Art Of Klezmer Clarinet is an ode to the Jewish clarinetists who emigrated from Eastern Europe and who flourished in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century. Margot Leverett plays classics and her own work in traditional style, accompanied by a combo of double bass, accordion, trombone, violin and percussion.
CD. The art of klezmer clarinet – Margot Leverett. LABEL: Traditional Crossroads (2011), code: CD 4296. Video
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