Get ready for the 24th annual KlezmerQuerque
March 6, 7 & 8, 2026
Friday, Saturday & Sunday
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KlezmerQuerque is an internationally recognized annual festival of klezmer music and dance. Join Cantor Beth Cohen and special guest artists The Veretski Pass Duo (Cookie Segelstein and Josh Horowitz), and dancers Bruce Bierman and Gilberto Melendez for three days of Yiddishkeit—including Klezmer and traditional Jewish music, Yiddish language, songs and dance, concerts, Shabbat services, and hands-on workshops. Also featuring Jordan Wax, Rachel Leader and Ariel Shapiro of A Glezele Tey, The Nahalat Shalom Community Klezmer Band, Rikud Dancers, and High Dezert Klezmer & Judaic Band.
Cookie Segelstein
Cookie Segelstein, violin and viola, received her Masters degree in Viola from The Yale School of Music in 1984. Until moving to California in 2010, she was principal violist in Orchestra New England and assistant principal in The New Haven Symphony, and served on the music faculty at Southern Connecticut State University. She is the founder and director of Veretski Pass, a member of Budowitz, The Youngers of Zion with Henry Sapoznik, has performed with Kapelye, The Klezmatics, Frank London, Klezmer Fats and Swing with Pete Sokolow and the late Howie Leess, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, and The Klezmer Conservatory Band. Click here to read full bio
joshua horowitz
Joshua Horowitz, chromatic button accordion, cimbalom and piano, received his Masters degree in Composition and Music Theory from the Academy of Music in Graz, Austria, where he taught Music Theory, was Director of the Yiddish Music Research Project and served as Research Fellow for nine years. He is currently adjunct Professor at Sonoma State University. Click here to read full bio.
Bruce Bierman
Bruce Bierman is a dance and theater teaching artist, performer, choreographer, and co-artistic director of the award-winning Yiddish Theatre Ensemble in Berkeley. As a director/choreographer with YTE, his work includes: The Megilleh of Itzik Manger (starring Naomi Newman), Between Worlds (based on the life and work of Irene Klepfisz), and the video adaptation of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance. He also served as Yiddish Dance and Theater Dramaturg—guiding the development, research, and cultural context—for Paula Vogel’s Tony Award–winning Indecent for several productions including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, YTE's co-production with the San Francisco Playhouse and Lesher Center for the Performing Arts.
A returning guest artist at KlezmerQuerque, Bruce delights in creating spaces where dance, music, theater, and folks from all backgrounds come together in pure joy.
gilberto melendez
We are very excited and fortunate that Bruce’s husband and professional dancer Gilberto Melendez will be joining us this weekend for surprise performances and co-leading classes!! Gilberto Melendez began his career as a dancer in Managua, Nicaragua as the most sought-after dance partner for every fiesta in town. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, he focused his studies on ballet, flamenco and tango as a student of some of the leading teachers in their fields including: Sonya Van Beer, the prima ballerina of the Dutch National Ballet, and master flamenco teacher Roberto Amaral. Performance credits include: Principal dancer in El Gato Montes starring Placido Domingo, The Nutcracker with the Palos Verdes Ballet, and The Megilleh of Itzik Manger with the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival. Gilberto also serves on the staff of Lighthouse for the Blind and performs and co-leads the Joy of Jewish Dance workshops with his husband, Bruce Bierman.
jordan wax
Jordan Wax is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, and traditional musician based in New Mexico. For the past twenty five years he has studied intergenerational music traditions with elders from a variety of cultural lineages in the Missouri Ozarks, Central Mexico, Ecuador, Northern New Mexico, and Greater Yiddishland, and directed his own collaborative ensembles in the context of Ashkenazi, Ozark, and Indo-Hispanic cultural revitalizations. He performs traditional Yiddish songs and new compositions as a soloist, norteño and Central-Mexican traditions with Mariachi Sonidos del Monte and his own ensemble, Lone Piñon, and creates bilingual children’s programming that helps families and infants establish a positive context around linguistic diversity and regionalism in partnership with the Santa Fe Public Libraries. Click here to read full bio.
a glezele tey
A Glezele Tey duo is comprised of klezmer musicians, composers and cultural organizers Ariel Shapiro and Rachel Leader. (Click on names to read full bios)
A Glezele Tey (Yiddish for “a little glass of tea”) invites you into their living room for a little glass of tea from the samovar, bringing audiences into an intimate and enthralling world of klezmer, Yiddish folk song, and tkhines (traditional Ashkenazi prayers centering the experiences of women, trans, and gender non-conforming people, set to new melodies). Drawing from old recordings and contemporary culture rooted in the Eastern European Jewish diaspora, A Glezele Tey’s music is an act of deep care—rooted in community gathering, lineage, and ritual, we raise our collective voices to move through grief, inspire action, and build a frayer velt (a freer world). aglezeletey.com