Music & Audio Dramas
As the vocalist for Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi and as a soloist, Elizabeth Schwartz has performed at festivals, synagogues and concert halls on every continent. Her myriad acclaimed recordings of Yiddish, Ladino, Hebrew and English have been released on the Naxos World, Arc Music UK, Global Village and Transcontinental Music record labels.
Select albums by Elizabeth Schwartz are available for purchase by contacting her directly, or third-party vendors linked below.
Shimmering Lights
Hanukkah Music
Yales Strom’s Broken Consort presents a collection of traditional and new Khanike (Hanukkah) songs. With musical influences from all over the world, we celebrate the many ways this sacred festival is observed by different cultures around the globe.
Extensive liner notes with artist biographies, original lyrics and English translations.
City of the Future
Yiddish Songs from the Former Soviet Union
Yale Strom, violinist, composer, filmmaker, writer, photographer and playwright, has conducted extensive field research among the Jewish and Rom communities in Europe and Russia. In this album he explores the thriving Yiddish culture in the former Soviet Union in 1931 with Yiddish schools, theatres, choirs, literature and discussion groups.
This fascinating and unique album brings light to an immensely well-established cultural entity in Russia before the onset of WWII.
The Devil's Brides
Klezmer and Yiddish Songs
Passionate, mournful, exuberant Klezmer and Yiddish songs played with violin, tsimbl, accordion, bass and vocals.
Each track is introduced by Miriam Margolyes. Music from and inspired by the audio drama The Witches of Lublin, starring Tovah Feldshuh. Many photos, info about the music, artist biographies and original Yiddish lyrics, all translated into English, German, French and Spanish.
Borsht with Bread Brothers
Klezmer
Exuberant and mournful Klezmer melodies with vocals, violin, guitar, bass, accordion, saxophone and percussion.
The arrangements are spontaneous and unique and pay tribute to the past while creating something fresh and new. 36-page booklet with extensive info in English, German, French and Spanish.
Other Discography
Debs In Canton
An Original Radioplay Written By Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz
Starring Phil Proctor and featuring Robert Fass, PJ Ochlan, LJ Ganser, Melinda Peterson, Doug Shapiro, Anne Bobby and Micah Gellert - Hosted by Frank Stasio.
Eugene Victor Debs’s unwavering social conscience and his deeply held Christian faith created the foundation of his political philosophy. But it has never been easy for any man to risk everything—from his possessions, his family, his freedom, or his health—to do what he knows is right. Debs’s crisis is dramatized in Debs In Canton, a new work of audio fiction from SueMedia Productions and MidSummer Sound Company that looks at what his life might have been like in the months leading up to this seminal moment in American history.
The Witches of Lublin
An Audio Book featuring "The Devil's Brides"
Ellen Kushner teamed up with klezmer vocalist and screenwriter Elizabeth Schwartz and violinist/composer/filmmaker/ethnographer Yale Strom to create what they called their “Historical-Feminist-Klezmer-Shtetl-Magic Realist-Musical Radio Drama.”
An award-winning audio drama based on true and little-known history of Jewish women’s lives in 18th Century Europe. Featuring Tovah Feldshuh, Simon Jones, Neil Gaiman, Barbara Rosenblat, and a cast of New York City’s finest Broadway and audio talent!
The Witches of Lublin was commissioned by the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music, and had its workshop premiere there in 2007.
Absolutely Klezmer (Volume 2)
Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi
The upbeat music of the clarinet and strings once filed the halls of every Jewish celebration. But time and the loss of many of the older generation's finest klezmer musicians has meant the loss of much of that music.
A monumental work by Yale Strom, The Absolutely Complete Klezmer Songbook, is a major collection of 313 full length klezmer songs, including out of print and previously unpublished melodies, many with Yiddish lyrics. Absolutely Klezmer Volume 2 is a brand new take on some classics as well as new tunes and new arrangements by Yale Strom himself. Strom collected much of the material from Jewish and Rom (Gypsy) Holocaust survivors who recalled those melodies from childhood. Until the mid-1970s klezmer was virtually unknown to the non-Jewish public and only nostalgically remembered by many Jews. Today is the way klezmer bands throughout the world celebrate the resurgence of Yiddish culture."
Cafe Jew Zoo
Yale Strom with Hot Pstromi and Klazzj
Klezmer music began as instrumental folk dance and virtuosic display music among the Ashkenazic Jews of Europe. Since that time, the genre has become synonymous with Eastern European Jewish culture and gradually has broadened to include vocals and influences from other indigenous cultures. Simultaneously exuberant and joyful, soulful and melancholy, "Cafe Jew Zoo" includes everything from the most deeply traditional Khasidic melodies to new Yiddish American vocals about contemporary themes.
Garden of Yidn
Yale Strom, with Hot Pstromi and Klazzj, featuring Elizabeth Schwartz
A collection of East-European Jewish songs and originals that hark back to a fascinating and near forgotten time. This music isn't just revived, it comes alive!
