(ALBANY, N.Y.) – Violinist Alicia Svigals, the world’s foremost klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Klezmatics, will present a program of ecstatic Jewish melodies at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center on the uptown campus on Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 7:30pm. Svigals will be accompanied by Patrick Farrell on accordion and Brian Glassman on bass.

Alicia Svigals has taught and toured with violinist Itzhak Perlman, who recorded her compositions as duets with Svigals accompanied by the Klezmatics, and she was awarded first prize at the Safed, Israel international klezmer festival competition. In addition to performing, Svigals leads lectures and workshops on Jewish music for adults and children, directs klezmer string orchestras, and has published literature on Jewish music and culture.

With the Klezmatics, Svigals and five other musicians created contemporary Jewish roots music that combined the joyous and mystical Yiddish folk tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and an overtly political world view. For sixteen years, Svigals toured internationally with the Klezmatics and recorded five albums which reached the top ten of the Billboard, College Music Journal, and European World Music Charts.

She has been featured in V-Day, gala performances of playwright Eve Ensler’s Obie-winning The Vagina Monologues, most recently at Madison Square Garden with Phoebe Snow, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Wynona Ryder, Calista Flockhart, Lily Tomlin, Margaret Cho, Erica Jong, Brooke Shields, and Rita Wilson. She has composed for the Kronos Quartet, and has been written for by composer Osvaldo Golijov, who was commissioned by Merkin Concert Hall to create a work featuring Svigals and clarinetist David Krakauer. She has appeared as a soloist on NPR’s New Sounds Live and at festivals such as FiddleFest in New York’s Central Park, Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Wash., and the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Her debut album, Fidl, is the world’s very first solo klezmer fiddle recording.

Tickets are $15 for the general public, $12 for seniors and UAlbany faculty & staff and $10 for students and are available at UAlbany Performing Arts Center or by calling the Box Office at 518. 442.3997. This program is presented by the UAlbany Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Center for Jewish Studies as a prelude to its year-long series Jews Along the Hudson.

The UAlbany Performing Arts Center includes a five-theatre complex on the University at Albany uptown campus and Page Hall, an 800 seat theatre located on the downtown campus. Using all six performance spaces, the Performing Arts Center (PAC) hosts over 500 events annually in all of the performing arts including dance, music and theatre.