Jeanette Lewicki performs & teaches in concert halls, recording studios, dreams & subways around the world. She has recorded seven CDs; the latest is “Harbst” with the San Francisco Klezmer Experience.

“I started singing Yiddish in my twenties, when I moved into a San Francisco commune where somebody had left an accordion behind. I tried it on &, being who I am, went to look in the mirror. It looked so good that I said: Oooh, I guess I have to learn to play this thing.

“The commune ran a vegan soup kitchen with live entertainment, & we used to put up travellers who needed a place to crash. One of the guests handed me a Yiddish songbook, & that was that.”

Jeanette recently spent three years in New York, where she was commissioned to arrange the Yiddish children’s songs of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman. Her other projects include a CD with Bessarabian singer Arkady Gendler, which critic Ari Davidow calls “a perfect example of how you record the music of older musicians whose knowledge and songs you wish to preserve.” As a faculty member of Yiddish Summer Weimar 2006, she worked with a new generation of Yiddish songwriters in an innovative program run by her teacher, Alan Bern (music director of the band Brave Old World). Before leaving Brooklyn, Jeanette also performed in a four-accordion ensemble, led by composer Guy Klusevcek, on a sunny hillside in Green-Wood cemetery, attended by dozens of dragonflies.

Ms. Lewicki currently lives, teaches, sings and plays in San Francisco, CA.