This class will introduce students to the world of Yiddish folksong through historic and vibrant ethnographic field recordings from Eastern Europe. This class will be immersive in select musical jewels via their texts (Yiddish with English translation), music content, as well as their social context within Ashkenazic life. The class will be inclusive to all backgrounds with no need to read music necessary (but it wouldn’t hurt!). In this class, students will encouraged to embrace their inner musician, become immersed in the power of the music and sing as a group to connect to the songs!

Leybl (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 only 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.

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.