In this class on music of the Yiddish world, we will explore the cultural relationship between religious and secular music within historic Ashkenazy communities of Eastern Europe. We will examine the aspects and components of both religious and secular music, as well as non-Jewish music, to highlight their similarities and differences. Through historic recordings of singers and instrumentalists, the class will highlight various musical repertoires, from the synagogue to the Yiddish stage, to reveal the rich and diverse melting pot that creates what is known as Yiddish music. No ability to read music is necessary (but it wouldn’t hurt!). 

Leybl Duvid (Derek David) is a composer, conductor, and music educator based in Boston, MA. He is the music director of A Besere Velt - אַ בעסערע װעלט, one of few choruses in the world dedicated to the preservation and commissioning of Yiddish choral repertoire. With A Besere Velt, Leybl has collaborated with such artists as Daniel Kahn, Lorin Sklamberg, Polina Sheppard, Anthony Russel, Frank London, Hankus Netzky and Judy Bressler. Having initially spoken Yiddish as a child with his grandmother, he studied Yiddish with the Boston and New York Workers Circle and the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) in their summer immersion program. Speaking frequently in academic and community settings, Leybl was recently a subject of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, and had the distinct honor of delivering a lecture in Yiddish on his life as a Yiddishst and composer at the Sorbonne Université in the spring of 2024. He has studied Jewish Music with Hankus Netzkey and Yiddish Folk singing with Ethel Raim, where his ethnographic research of field recordings has led him to sing performances of the Yiddish folksong repertoire. Leybl has been on Faculty at Yiddish New York and will be a Teaching Fellow at KlezKandada this coming summer.

A classical composer by training, his music –much of which incorporates Yiddish folksongs, Klezmer, and Jewish themes– has been featured in settings as disparate as the LA Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight Festival and the Boston Festival for New Jewish Music. He has been commissioned by Juventas Ensemble, Verona Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet & clarinetist Nicholas Davies, violist Jesse Morrison, and SAKURA Cello Quintet. He is currently Lecturer in Music at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.