Presented by Penn’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and Wolf Humanities Center 

Yiddish songwriting, arranging, and performing duo Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell (vocalist) and Dmitri Gaskin (accordionist) create new musical idioms by combining two distinct older ones: African American spirituals and the music of Jewish Eastern Europe. Drawing from folk songs, lullabies, art, and religious music, Children of the Ghetto + Black Shul mobilizes an array of historic genres to create a repertoire of songs authentically inhabiting the sounds and histories of two traditions. 

Cosponsored by Penn’s Department of Africana Studies and Center for Africana Studies.

Tsvey Brider (meaning “two brothers” in Yiddish) is a Yiddish songwriting, arranging and performing duo. Formed in 2017 after winning the Concorso Internacional de Canciones en Idish (Der Idisher Idol) in Mexico City, Tsvey Brider has gone on to be featured in the Gorki Theatre’s Radikale Jüdisches Kulturtage (Radical Jewish Culture Festival), tour across Poland and perform for culture and music festivals all over the United States and Europe.

Inspired by the work of an international group of twentieth century Jewish writers and poets, Tsvey Brider is an outfit for the musical exploration of contemporary life in the Yiddish language. This has led the duo to write, arrange and perform in a diverse array of  styles and genres including contemporary classical, cabaret, blues and pop in addition to the sounds of Jewish Eastern Europe that have traditionally accompanied music in the Yiddish language.

The members of Tsvey Brider (Anthony Russell and Dmitri Gaskin) have performed and recorded with such noted artists as Anthony Coleman, Daniel Kahn, Josh Dolgin/SoCalled, Michael Winograd, Sarah Aroeste, Michael Alpert, Alan Bern, Yale Strom and Veretski Pass.