Ty Citerman

Bop Kabbalah+Voices

pho­to by María Kim Grand ©2019

In 2016, Ty com­plet­ed and pre­miered a cham­ber jazz piece fea­tur­ing two female voic­es called “Future Gen­er­a­tions (Doyrus Fun Der Tsukun­ft).” Then in 2018, he received a grant from Brook­lyn Arts Coun­cil to grow that body of work and launch a new project called “Bop Kabbalah+Voices: New Rad­i­cal Yid­dish Lib­er­a­tion Songs.” The grant sup­port­ed the cre­ation and per­for­mance of a song cycle that sets Yid­dish labor texts from the late 19th & ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Those texts about the fight against cap­i­tal­ism — for a tru­ly just and equi­table world — are defi­ant, coura­geous and pre­scient, res­onat­ing loud­ly TODAY.

Sara Ser­pa and Judith Berk­son joined Ty to bring this music to life, and after a series of con­certs, the three of them record­ed the music in 2019. The album “Bop Kabbalah+Voices: When You Speak of Times to Come (Ven Du Redst Fun Naye Tsaytn),” was released on Infre­quent Seams at sun­down on Decem­ber 10, 2020, just in time for Hanukah. You can Order it on Band­camp HERE.

This con­cept album fea­tures a lush trio of gui­tar, elec­tron­ics, piano and Sara and Judith’s imag­i­na­tive­ly ver­sa­tile and acro­bat­ic vocals. Left­ist texts from the 150 year-old Yid­dish labor bund move­ment are giv­en an unprece­dent­ed mod­ern musi­cal treat­ment: del­i­cate, plain­tive, hyp­not­ic and pas­sion­ate. On Ty’s first album as band­leader in six years, you’ll hear the song cycle fol­lowed by the ambi­tious, 23-minute “Future Gen­er­a­tions (Doyrus Fun Der Tsukun­ft).” Along­side his gui­tar work, Judith and Sara’s voic­es dance, soar and some­times erupt. Metic­u­lous­ly record­ed, mixed and mas­tered by Gram­my Award-win­ning engi­neer Damon Whit­te­more, “Bop Kabbalah+Voices…” looks to both the past for inspi­ra­tion and the future (“When You Speak of Times to Come…”) for cre­ative vision­ing — may this music inspire lis­ten­ers to imag­ine and join the orga­nized strug­gle for a more just, humane world. A por­tion of all prof­its from the album’s sales were donat­ed to help sup­port the immi­grant jus­tice work of New Sanc­tu­ary Coalition.

After two years away from live per­for­mance dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Bop Kabbalah+Voices played two home­town Brook­lyn con­certs on June 16 and 17, 2021. The sec­ond of these was part of the Infre­quent Seams Stream­fest II and a high fideli­ty video and audio record­ing was cap­tured while the trio was par­tic­u­lar­ly focused and on fire. Ty re-mixed the audio and it was again mas­tered by Damon Whit­te­more for release on Infre­quent Seams (IS-1046) in August 2022. You can order the album, enti­tled “The Yid­dish Song Cycle Live” HERE on Band­camp and watch the video for “Es Rirt Zikh/It’s Mov­ing” as well.

Ty received addi­tion­al fund­ing from Brook­lyn Artis Coun­cil in 2023 and 2025 to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing the ensem­ble, invit­ing guest drummer/percussionist Shay­na Dunkel­man into the fold. New music with orig­i­nal texts by Ty and Yid­dish violinist/composer Eléonore Biezun­s­ki intro­duce a song cycle about the cli­mate and cli­mate jus­tice. The band pre­miered these sev­en new pieces of music in 2023 — catch “Vas­er On Loshn (Water With­out Sound)” here — and record­ed them in ear­ly 2026. Stay tuned for infor­ma­tion about the new record­ing’s release in 2027!