Daniel Hoffman/Jeanette Lewicki dinner/concert February 11

Saturday, February 11

8 pm

$55/person

byob

a celebration of Jewish food and music featuring, Visiting from Tel Aviv, violin player Daniel Hoffman and from Berkeley, accordion player, Jeanette Lewick

5 course menu details, coming soon

menu

soup
lentil patties in horseradish stock

salad
roasted beets with cara cara orange salad with walnut dressing

small plate
buckwheat knishes with mustard
homemade tempeh roasted with pears
homemade sauerkraut

entree
collard rolls stuffed with chickpeas and wild rice baked in tomato-pomegranate sauce (from our own dried tomatos)
cauliflour kugel


dessert
apples stuffed with dried fruit and nuts, baked in chardonnay and spices
rosewater-saffron ice "cream" (coconut based)

Violinist Daniel Hoffman and vocalist/accordionist Jeanette Lewicki have been playing and recording klezmer and Yiddish music together for 15 years with the acclaimed Bay-Area group The Klez-X. Since Daniel moved to Israel in 2005, their performances together are a rare event not to be missed.

Jeanette Lewicki, vocals and accordion

Orphaned at an early age, without a dowry or family background, Jeanette Lewicki did whatever she had to do to learn to sing Yiddish & play accordion. Her first steady gig was at a vegan commune in San Francisco, where she played weekly in the soup kitchen band. Having apprenticed briefly with performance artist Jack Smith, she studied at Columbia University (through a YIVO scholarship) and in Oxford, England (with the New Jewish Music ensemble Brave Old World).  Madam Lewicki now performs with various klezmer groups and has led numerous Yiddish song workshops in New York, in San Francisco, and at Yiddish Summer Weimar, directed by the innovative music educator Dr. Alan Bern.

Jeanette Lewicki's many recordings include "Mayn Shtetele Soroke" (which she produced for 77-year-old Bessarabian singer Arkady Gendler), "Fli Mayn Flishlang" (for which she arranged childrens' songs by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman), "Harbst" (with the Klez-X), & "the gonifs break out," a new release on Porto Franco Records. Ms. Lewicki is the editrix of the zine "Yiddish Tango Illustrated" and a founding member of Accordionists Against the Death Penalty. She strives to combine folk tradition with Yiddish modernist style, & to make announcers and paramours pronounce her last name right: "Levitsky.”

Daniel Hoffman, violin

A descendant of a long line of Bessarabian furriers, Daniel was born and raised near Los Angeles. After graduating from the Manhattan School of Music in New York, he quickly began un-learning most of what he'd been taught and turned his attentions to Eastern European Jewish music and formed several klezmer bands in San Francisco. In 1992, he co-founded Davka, combining Ashkenazi music with jazz and Middle-Eastern rhythms. Davka has released five CDs of original music, including four on the Tzadik label. He also founded the Klez-X in 1996 and has developed a reputation as one of the foremost experts of the Yiddish violin style, recording and performing with the top players in the field.

Daniel has received numerous composition grants, including from Meet The Composer and the NEA and has written new scores for the 1920s silent films “The Golem” and “Jewish Luck”. He composed music for “David in Shadow and Light,” a new musical (with librettist Yehuda Hyman) based on the King David story which premiered at Theatre J in Washington DC in 2008. In Israel he performs with Trio Carpion, Andralamoussia, Echo 3, Yehuda Katz, Keren Friedman and the Jazzraelites, and in the new Jerusalem Theater Company comedy “Are You Happy Yet?” He currently teaches at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and recently began producing the pilot episode of Violin Around the World, a 36-part documentary film series which explores the role of the violin in diverse cultures worldwide.