Ashkenaz, our Jewish and Yiddish culture festival begins today! We’ve got an overabundance of great activities that everybody can enjoy ranging from musical performances to story-telling and even Jewish Theatre! In addition to the ticketed events such as The Corpse Bride and Leo Spellman’s Rhapsody, a lot of our programming will be free of charge, so come on down and check out some of the great things we have going on such as:
On Thursday we will have the dynamic duo, Lerner and Moguilevsky, here for free! They’ll be tearing up the Toronto Music Garden with one of their fantastic musical performances.
Our Kids and Family programming will include a Parade Crafts workshop where children can learn to make their own Parade Crafts for the Ashkenaz section of the Labour Day parade. Family entertainers, Sharon and Bram will be orchestrating some traditional yiddish sing-a-longs.
Musical experimentalist Socalled will be highlighting Saturday with his sweet sample-based beats. Opa will be giving us their North American debut here at Harbourfront Centre and Havdallah will be bringing their blend of African beats and Ashkenazi tunes. We will also be having performances from the nomadic Shye Ben Tzur who will be making his North American debut here at the festival, as well as poetic, West-african and American Jazz influenced Yemen Blues band.
Lastly we will be closing out with our Ashkenaz Parade which will explore a fusion of music, dance and other cultural aspects of the Jews and the Roma. It will feature stilt-walkers, puppetry, music and dance, amateur musicians and more! Check out this clip of last year’s parade!
Come by and allow yourself to be engrossed by the cultural opus that is Ashkenaz Festival, here at Harbourfront Centre!
