An Evening with Brivele & A Glezele Tey – Klezmer music and Yiddish Folk Songs

Brivele (Yiddish for “little letter” ), a Seattle-based ensemble who braid together Yiddish song, anti-fascist and labor balladry, folk-punk, and contemporary rabble-rousing in stirring vocal harmony. Like letters, songs travel — through time and over borders. They pick up dirt, aromas, fingerprints. They are sent to lovers, they foment revolution, they get stolen and censored, burned and salvaged, sewn into our clothes. We journey into the archives of Yiddish anti-fascist musical tradition, bringing together anti-authoritarian satire, mournful remembrances, and the disguised political commentary in folk ditties and theater classics. These songs are a correspondence: our ancestors’ voices speak clearly and uncompromisingly, sometimes sweetly, to our present moment.

A Glezele Tey (Yiddish for “a little glass of tea”), a group comprised of acclaimed klezmer musicians and composers Ariel Shapiro, Rachel Leader, and Richie Barshay. Come for an intimate concert of klezmer, Yiddish folk songs, and tkhines—traditional Ashkenazi prayers centering women, trans, and gender non-conforming voices, set to new melodies. Drawing from archival recordings and contemporary life in the Eastern European Jewish diaspora, A Glezele Tey’s music is grounded in community, ritual, and care—lifting collective voices to move through grief, inspire action, and imagine a frayer velt (a freer world).