Beth Bahia Cohen at the BFNJM

Join us for the second season of the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music, a free monthly concert series presenting original music drawing from the Jewish cultural experience. Hosted by BackRoom at The Boston Synagogue, co-presented by JArts, and live-streaming everywhere, the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music highlights the best in Jewish-influenced music by composers and performers who live right here in our own backyard.

All concerts will be performed live at the Boston Synagogue and live-streamed.

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Beth Bahia Cohen has spent a large part of her career exploring how the violin is played in various cultures. Of Syrian Jewish and Russian Jewish heritage, she was inspired at a young age by the sounds she heard at family gatherings. She has been playing traditional Greek music on the violin and several types of lyras for many years, learning from and performing with violin and lyra players from Andros, Sifnos, Kythnos, Crete, Epiros, Macedonia, and elsewhere. She has performed with New York dance groups GAFS and Akrites, as well as throughout the U.S. and Canada, in concerts, at Greek dance symposiums (FDF, HDF, etc), and more.

Beth is a founding member of Ziyiá, an ensemble performing Greek music from all regions that was started at EEFC’s Mendocino Balkan Music & Dance Workshop, and has also performed with Vasilis Kostas, Christos Zotos, Petroloukas Halkias, Yiorgos Katsaros, and many other musicians. She also is a member of Pontic Firebird, a band formed in 2010 at the EEFC camps. Beth has taught Greek Violin, Greek Ensemble, and Transcarpathian Ensemble at EEFC Mendocino and East Coast camps for many years, as well as for the recent EEFC online classes. She also performs and teaches klezmer, Hungarian, Romanian, and Turkish music on the violin and other bowed instruments.

Beth is Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music, where she leads the Berklee Greek Ensemble and the Berklee Global Strings Ensemble, and is an Applied Faculty member at Tufts University. She is a 2022 recipient of both the Massachusetts Cultural Council Traditional Arts Fellowship and the Apprenticeship/Mentor grant.

The Boston Festival of New Jewish Music was created by local musicians who believe that:

- People find meaning and joy in art and community, and communities come together around shared experiences, especially regular meetings over time.

- We all benefit from hearing great concerts and musicians benefit from the opportunity to develop and present new works to people excited to hear them.

- A strong cultural ecosystem is part of what makes the Boston area so vital and strong.

- Great Jewish music is great music. You don’t need to be from the South Bronx to love hip hop or from Panama to love reggaeton; why should you need to know the difference between the Torah and the Talmud to fall in love with Abigale Reisman’s violin or Zach Mayer’s saxophone? Our music is from a certain cultural place, but it’s for everyone.

- Art should be accessible to everyone in our broader community. Especially after the past 18 months has made hearing live music so difficult, we are doubling down on accessibility. Concerts are free and live-streamed for folks who can’t attend in person. For those who can, the venue is totally handicapped accessible and an easy walk from the Red Line, Orange Line, Green Line, and BlueBike stations.

If you believe any of these things, or just want to hear some amazing concerts, join us for this second season of the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music.

The Boston Synagogue is handicapped accessible and an easy walk from the Red Line, Orange Line, Green Line, and BlueBike stations.

If you need to drive, there are handicapped parking spots at the front door and no stairs from parking to seating or restrooms. It also has non-fixed seating, which means we can accommodate wheelchairs in any row and allow folks in wheelchairs to sit with their friends, families, or PCAs.

If you have any questions about accessibility at the Boston Synagogue or on the Live Stream, please contact Nat Seelen at [email protected].

Concerts at the Boston Synagogue will follow the Boston Synagogue’s COVID response plan, which is informed by public health guidance from the CDC, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the City of Boston.

At this point, that means that we:

- Require proof of vaccination for all artists, audience, and staff.

- Require masks at all times while not eating or drinking. Artists may remove masks when performing and will maintain a 6-ft distance from the audience.

- Limit capacity at the venue to allow for appropriate spacing of seating.

Over the course of the pandemic, the Boston Synagogue has invested in updated ventilation, including a HEPA filtration system, and in improved AV equipment for live streaming.

Based on the situation at the time of each concert, we may be required to further limit in-person seating. If this happens, we will contact ticket holders with alternative options for watching the concert.

Host or Publisher The Boston Festival of New Jewish Music