2025 ARTISTS & EVENTS
Learn more about this season’s events, artists & collaborators
NOW Ensemble March 2025 Residency:
Artists & Partners
NOW Ensemble March 2025 residency artists:
Mark Dancigers, electric guitar
ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE:
As part of its 20th season anniversary, NOW Ensemble is embarking on a project that celebrates community, developing deeper partnerships in places where members of the ensemble live and have close community ties. With its unique instrumentation, the ensemble brings a fresh sound and a new perspective to the classical tradition, infused with the musical influences that reflect the diverse backgrounds of its members. Dedicated to the creation of vibrant new musical works, they have premiered and recorded dozens of new works by some of the most exciting composers of their generation. NOW regularly appears at major venues and festivals around the world, and released its seventh album, Before and After, in 2021 on New Amsterdam Records.
Learn more about NOW Ensemble at www.nowensemble.com
Purchase tickets for NOW’s Chamber @ The Drake show on March 16, 2025 HERE.
Plan of the City features NOW Ensemble performing music of Judd Greenstein, set to a video created by artist Josh Frankel.
Antenna Cloud Farm is excited to introduce a new collaboration with folks down in Hampshire County curating an exciting new monthly chamber music series at The Drake.
Founded in 2022, Chamber @ The Drake is an exciting new series dedicated to making classical music engaging and accessible to all. Concerts are presented in a cozy bar setting at Amherst’s popular venue, The Drake, making for an inspiring and intimate experience. Devoted to the belief that chamber music is profound in its essence, this series fosters an atmosphere where the musicians and audience connect through sound and conversations.
Learn more about NOW’s Chamber @ The Drake show on March 16, 2025 HERE.
ACF EDUCATIONAL PARTNERS
As part of their ACF residency, NOW Ensemble will visit with local students ranging from elementary school to high school for performances and interactive workshops. Antenna Cloud Farm is extremely proud to partner with local schools and musical educators listed below, all of whom are working tirelessly and skillfully to educate our next generations.
STRINGS FOR KIDS:
Based in Greenfield, MA, Strings for Kids is partnership program between the Greenfield Public Schools and the Pioneer Valley Symphony. The goal of Strings For Kids is to ensure that every child in Greenfield has the opportunity to learn to play a stringed instrument.
Strings for Kids is directed by local cellist and educator, Julie Carew, a dedicated and experienced pedagogue who has been teaching in Greenfield since 2016, and is the Education Programs Director for the PVS. Julie is also a member of the New England Repertory Orchestra (NERO), and performed in a string quartet as part of the 2023 Antena Cloud Farm Music Walk.
PIONEER VALLEY SYMPHONY YOUTH ORCHESTRA
Founded in 2013 and based in Greenfield, MA, the Pioneer Valley Symphony Youth Orchestra (PVSYO)zis made up of student musicians from across the region, including Hampshire and Franklin Counties, southern Vermont, and New Hampshire. The PVSYO is a vital part of the Pioneer Valley Symphony’s mission to connect, inspire, and enhance our community by providing opportunities to make, appreciate, and learn about classical music. The orchestra is comprised of talented, hard-working 10-to-18-year-old musicians, and led by Youth Orchestra Director Hannah Smeltz.
Hannah Smeltz is a Greenfield-based flutist, pianist, conductor, and educator with a diverse musical background. She brings twenty years of teaching experience with musicians from preschool through adulthood. Hannah also serves as the director of the Montague Community Band and performs as a flutist with the Pioneer Valley Symphony.
GREAT FALLS MIDDLE SCHOOL & TURNERS FALLS HIGH SCHOOL
The music programs at GFMS and TFHS are led by Alyssa Comeau, a McGraw Uplift Award recipient.
Great Falls Middle School offers many opportunities for students to get involved in a music program. During school, they offer 6th grade band, 7th-8th beginner band, 7th-8th advanced band, 6th grade chorus, 7th grade chorus, and 8th grade chorus. These groups perform throughout the year in various school concerts as well as the Great East Music Festival in the spring.
After school, students can get involved in the 6th-12th Turners Falls Marching Band, as well as the Turners Falls musical. With these after school opportunities, students interact with high school students and work together to perform for the school and the community.
From a 2023 Greenfield Recorder article:
”In the 3 years that Alyssa has worked at Turners Falls High School, she has transformed the Music Department from having just nine students enrolled to 120. After the pandemic started and the former music teacher retired, the Music Department was extremely small. Comeau built the department from the ground up to provide a “safe space for children to flourish in their interests,” she explained.”
Click HERE to read the entire article, and add some inspiration to your day!
DUO YUMENO
ACF is proud to present internationally-acclaimed Duo YUMENO, a New York-based collaboration between koto / shamisen player and singer Yoko Reikano Kimura and cellist Hikaru Tamaki. Hailed by the New York Times as “unexpectedly groovy,” Duo YUMENO champions a singular fusion sound inspired by tradition but with a contemporary sensibility, commissioning and programming a dynamic range of compositions, all of which explore the dialogue between classical Japanese and western music.
This captivating duo has performed on stages across the U.S. and Japan, including Carnegie Hall, the United Nations, the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., the Tokyo National Museum, and several UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Japan including Kasuga Grand Shrine, Ryōan-ji and Yakushi-ji Temples. Awarded the 2014 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program grant, the duo is a proponent of contemporary music, commissioning innovative and multicultural new works from composers including Toshi Ichiyanagi, Daron Hagen, Marty Regan, Yoko Sato, Elizabeth Brown, Takuma Itoh and Kaito Nakahori.
As a cultural ambassador of Japanese music, Duo YUMENO was invited to Turkey in 2013, performing at the former Consulate General of Japan in Istanbul and at Namik Kemal University in Tekirdag. In 2014, they visited Trinidad and were featured at the opening concert of “Japan – CARICOM (14 Caribbean countries) Friendship Year 2014” – an event promoted by the Japan Foundation in NY, and co-organized by the Embassy of Japan in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2018, they performed at Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia in an event to celebrate the 110th anniversary of Japan-Colombia diplomatic relations. The duo also performed for the ceremony appointing the Honorary Consulate General of Japan in Puerto Rico in 2023.
Duo YUMENO is passionate about promoting intercultural music to younger generations, and has been in residence at Princeton University, UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Hawaii, the Hartt School and Longy School of music, performing recitals and providing unique opportunities for young composers to create new works for koto, shamisen and cello.
The duo’s name YUMENO 夢乃 means “of dreams” in Japanese. It is taken from a scroll which was given to Hikaru by Soko Morinaga (1925-1995), the Zen Buddhist master from whom Hikaru received his name. The complete text reads 夢乃里無片雲 (“In the land of dreams, not a single cloud exists”). Duo YUMENO cherishes the scroll, taking the first two characters for their name, and hoping that their dreams will be as clear as a pure blue sky.
Get tickets to Duo YUMENO’s 8/9 ACF show.
Visit the artists’ website to listen and learn more.
Return to the 2025 Season Events page.
THE SONGS WE CARRY:
CHRISTOPHER DYLAN HERBERT & CHRIS REYNOLDS
Baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert is a renowned and dynamic performing artist, educator, and musicologist, whose work spans opera, art song, and cross-disciplinary performance. Known for his nuanced interpretations and warm, expressive voice, he has performed with ensembles such as the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Sandbox Percussion, and New York Polyphony, earning acclaim for both early and contemporary music. With a BA in music from Yale University, a Masters degree in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard, and a PhD from Juilliard, Herbert’s career bridges scholarship and stage with depth and integrity, often championing underrepresented works and composers in immersive and socially conscious projects. “...Christopher Dylan Herbert, a baritone gifted with dramatic nuance and, when needed, hilariously deadpan delivery.” New York Times.
American pianist Chris Reynolds has made a name for himself as both a soloist and a collaborator. His performances have been hailed by Opera News as “exquisite,” and played with “jaw-dropping virtuosity.” Reynolds is a dynamic artist and sought-after collaborator who has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall and Tanglewood, and works with major opera houses like the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Equally at home as a soloist and collaborator, Reynolds brings insight, innovation, and emotional depth to every performance.
Get tickets to The Songs We Carry concert at ACF on 8/19.
Visit Christopher Dylan Herbert’s website to listen and learn more.
Visit Chris Reynold’s website to listen and learn more.
Return to the 2025 Season Events page.
KINAN AZMEH & CITYBAND
Originally from Damascus, Syria, clarinetist, composer and improviser Kinan Azmeh has gained international recognition for his distinctive voice, virtuosity, and genre-bending artistry across diverse musical genres.
Kinan has performed with numerous orchestras from the New York Philharmonic to the Syrian Symphony Orchestra, collaborated with such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma and Marcel Khalife, and tours venues across the world from the Opera Bastille in Paris and the Royal Albert Hall in London to the UN General Assembly and Carnegie Hall. Kinan’s first opera “Songs for Days to Come” which is fully sung in Arabic, was recently premiered in Osnabruck, Germany to great acclaim. He was also appointed to the National Council for the Arts on a nomination by President Joe Biden.
Formed in 2006 in New York City, the Kinan Azmeh CityBand celebrates 18 years of friendship with the recent release of their album, Live in Berlin. The quartet has toured the US, France, England, Germany, Holland, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey, gaining worldwide acclaim for their virtuosic and high energy performances from critics and audiences alike. With this ensemble, Azmeh strives to reach a balance between classical music, jazz, and the music of his homeland, Syria. Azmeh’s expressive clarinet meets Kyle Sanna’s rustic guitar, soaring at times over the dynamic and volatile backdrop of John Hadfield’s percussion and Josh Myers’ double bass.
Get tickets to Kinan Azmeh & CityBand’s 8/30 show at ACF.
Visit the artists’ website to listen and learn more.
Return to the 2025 Season Events page.
DREAMING IN DIASPORA:
A HILLTOP KLEZMER MINI-FEST WITH
Jordan Wax, Rachel Leader, Ariel Shapiro, Weaver, Richie Barshay
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025
(Rain location: The Shea Theater)
SCHEDULE:
12:00 pm: Antenna Cloud Farm Hilltop Opens
12:30-1:30 pm: Yiddish song workshop & fun for kids & families
Led by Jordan Wax, and open to all ages, abilities, and experience levels!
2:00-3:00: Open Jam Session
Come enjoy a relaxed afternoon with beautiful views, music, and community. Bring an instrument if you’d like! This will be an unfacilitated jam—feel free to play, listen, hang out, stroll, or just nap in the shade.
3:30-4:30 pm: Singing Workshop / Zingeray
All ages and levels are welcome! From old classics to newly written melodies, we will explore the breadth and depth of the Yiddish song movement and the current surge of creativity & cross-generational collaboration happening today. Songbooks will be provided, and participants will come away with the tools to continue singing and creating new interpretations, translations, and songs of their own. No musical experience or prior knowledge of Yiddish needed. Led by Ariel Shapiro, with live klezmer accompaniment by special guests. ("Zingeray" is a Yiddish word, likely derived from "zinger" meaning "singer" in English, and "ray" meaning "circle" or "gathering". )
4:30 pm: Community Dinner
We are working on a food plan for the day that may be a combination of bring-your-own, potluck, and/or ACF-provided offerings. Nobody will go hungry! But please stay tuned for details.
5:30 pm: Sunset Concert
Jordan Wax, Rachel Leader, Ariel Shapiro, Weaver, Richie Barshay, & special guests will explore fresh reinterpretations of Yiddish folk songs and klezmer dance repertoire, dive into archival source materials, and debut original compositions written in both Yiddish and English. Join us in listening deeply, raising our voices in communal song, and dreaming together in diaspora as we work to imagine and build a frayer velt (a freer world).
[Schedule remains subject to change.]
Get to know the artists’ work through projects including A Glezele Tey, Lone Piñon, Burikes, KlezCummington, and Magid Ensemble.
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ABOUT JORDAN WAX:
Jordan Wax is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, and traditional musician based in New Mexico. Rooted in relationships and oral history work with elders, his music celebrates cultural continuity and resilience while addressing contemporary issues with the tools that our esthetic and linguistic inheritance provides. 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.
ABOUT RACHEL LEADER:
Rachel Leader is passionate about cultivating vibrant community-led spaces, and is a klezmer violinist, cultural organizer, and educator based in Northampton, MA. She is a founding member of the critically acclaimed klezmer quartet Mamaliga, performing and teaching internationally at Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKanada, and Yiddish New York. Rachel is also a founder, violinist, and producer of the Magid Ensemble’s "Shterna & The Lost Voice," an immersive musical storytelling production that transports audiences into the rich world of Yiddish folklore.
Rachel received the 2021 Klezmer New Leaders Fellowship from the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and is a founding member of in-demand klezmer bands Burikes, A Glezele Tey, among other projects. She also regularly performs with Chaia (Kleztronica), blending house and techno grooves with electric fiddle and archival samples to create innovative soundscapes of Jewish diasporic identity. Rachel is the co-founder and director of KlezCummington, an annual klezmer and Yiddish cultural festival on her family’s land in Cummington, MA.
ABOUT ARIEL SHAPIRO:
Ariel [they/them] is a klezmer accordionist, multi-disciplinary artist and a core organizer of KlezCummington, an annual Jewish cultural festival dedicated to the creation and deepening of Yiddish diasporic music and cultures, as well the People's Puppet Parade, a community-based, devised spectacle theater processional exploring radical histories and communal expressions of grief and joy.
Ariel is a founding member of klezmer bands Burikes, A Glezele Tey, and Khaloymes, performing fresh takes on traditional klezmer tunes and Yiddish songs, leading community jams and zingerays (Yiddish sing-alongs), and accompanying Yiddish dancing and theatrical productions, including Jenny Romaine/Great Small Work’s “Three Cookbooks in the Garden: A stage illusion”, The Un-nameable Children's Project “Across the Ninefold River”, and A.C. Weaver’s “Inhabiting the Tsadik of the Woods”. Ariel also collaborates with Der Tkhines Proyekt, setting old Yiddish prayers (written for and by women and gender non-conforming folks) to new melodies, and composing new works to be sung in the streets, around kitchen tables, and anywhere they can be used to help tear down systems of injustice to build a frayer velt (a freer world). https://arielaccordion.weebly.com/
ABOUT WEAVER:
Weaver is a director, writer, translator, Yiddish dance leader and magid (traditional Jewish oral storyteller) based in Northampton MA. They are a puppet and mask designer, and co-founder/co-artistic director of The People’s Puppet Parade, a radical community parade based around the Jewish calendar which facilitates youth leadership and cultural literacy. They co-founded Theater Between Addresses, an all-queer theater collective which produces new work and has frequent workshops supporting new play development. With a love of all things archetypal and magical, they work with the public using folklore and spectacle to bring people of all ages and backgrounds into creative process. acweaver.weebly.com
ABOUT RICHIE BARSHAY:
Richie Barshay began drumming inside kitchen cabinets at an early age, and continues banging on things worldwide to this day. From his multi-percussion work with Herbie Hancock in the 2000s, to tours and recordings with Chick Corea, Esperanza Spalding, The Klezmatics, Fred Hersch, and Kenny Werner, he's been dubbed "a major rhythm voice on the rise" by Downbeat magazine, and “a major innovator who also knows how to have fun” by The Guardian (UK). He’s also performed with Natalie Merchant, Bobby McFerrin, Joe Lovano, Lee Konitz, Donald Harrison, Lionel Loueke, Julian Lage, the Curtis Brothers, Joey Weisenberg, Gabriel Kahane, Pete Seeger, and the Tony Award winning musical The Band’s Visit on Broadway and national tour.
Since 2004 he’s traveled across 5 continents teaching and performing as an American Musical Envoy with the U.S. State Department, and can be heard on over 100 recordings including two self-produced albums: Sanctuary, featuring Chick Corea (2014) and Homework, featuring Herbie Hancock (2004). Based in Northampton, Massachusetts and New York City, he is an AmSAT certified Alexander Technique teacher helping performing artists and others regain more body-mind coordination and ease of movement. https://www.richiebarshay.com/
Get tickets for ACF’s Dreaming in Diaspora event on 9/7.
Return to the 2025 Season Events page.