Lenka Lichtenberg

Vocalist & composer Lenka Lichtenberg shines as one of the most ambitious and visionary artistic builders in a nation that proudly defines its human identity as a multicultural mosaic. The Prague-born soprano unites the world through sacred song in no less than seven languagues — Yiddish, English, Czech, French, Russian, Hebrew and Roma — in collaboration with leading world-roots instrumentalists and vocalists from the global diaspora. Her seven albums to date are far more than mere recordings in sequence; each one is its own groundbreaking idea, carefully manifested from the selection of songs and performers, to the recording environments, to the form and shape in which they are presented to the world. From her inspirational roots in Jewish liturgy and Yiddish poetry, Lichtenberg has branched out to become a bona fide world-roots troubairitz.

Lichtenberg’s stunning most recent contribution to the world-roots canon, in the company of her ensemble Fray (Yiddish for “Free”), is Embrace. Continuing in the tradition of the ensemble’s eponymous 2010 debut album, Embrace boldly forges uncharted terrain in new Yiddish music — drawing on traditional songs and contemporary Yiddish poetry. Lichtenberg blends the tradition and language of Eastern European Jewish culture with unexpected sounds from Middle Eastern, Brazilian and North Indian music, expertly animated by Canada’s leading Indo-Canadian and world fusion artists, including: Alan Hetherington (musical co-director, drums, pandeiro, percussion), Ravi Naimpally (tabla, darbuka), Ernie Tollar (flutes, saxophones), John Gzowski (guitars, oud), and Chris Gartner (bass). It was officially released in April 2013 at one of Canada’s signature performance venues, the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Glenn Gould Studios.

Her next recording, to be unveiled in the fall of 2013, is Lullabies from Exile. This collaboration with world-renowned Iraqi-Jewish violinist, oud master and vocalist Yair Dalal was recorded on three continents over a two-year span. The project intertwines Babylonian and Yiddish traditional music — two branches of a tree that, while born from the same roots and trunk, grew in separate ways for so long.