Klezmer Violinist & Composer Alicia Svigals Receives Honorary Doctorate

On May 18, acclaimed klezmer musician and composer Alicia Svigals accepted an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) for “extraordinary contributions to the arts and Jewish life.” She joins the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Al Gore, Amos Oz, Philip Roth and many others. “It was thrilling,” Svigals told the Journal. 

Starting with her work in The Klezmatics during the 1980s and 90s, Alicia almost single handedly revived the tradition of klezmer fiddling. Her contemporary Jewish music combined the joyous and mystical Yiddish tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and an overtly political worldview. She co-led and toured with the band for 17 years, and recorded albums which reached the top ten of the Billboard and European World Music Charts.

When asked about the appeal of Klezmer music, Svigals said it’s secular and yet it’s not. “Traditional Yiddish culture in all its forms — folklore, idioms and literature — religion was completely intertwined with daily life,” she said. “Klezmer music is shot through with liturgical melodies, but its function is relatively secular.”

“Everybody, whether very religious or completely secular, can feel the Jewishness and own klezmer music as a Jew.” – Alicia Svigals

Klezmer is like an identity marker. It’s Jewish music that is welcoming. “Everybody, whether very religious or completely secular, can feel the Jewishness and own klezmer music as a Jew,” she said. Klezmer is also beautiful, interesting, complex, absorbing, developed music, which appeals to people outside of the Jewish community. And it has a big non-Jewish following, including many non-Jewish players. 

Svigals started playing the violin at age 5, but even before then was deeply affected by music.

Trained classically, Svigals fell in love with all different kinds of folk music in her teens. “I got involved in old-timey music: blue grass, Irish music”. She had been majoring in neuroscience in college, when she had to take time off. Svigals spent a year hitchhiking around Europe, meeting and playing with different musicians. “This was before they coined the term ‘World Music,’” she said. 

She changed her major to ethnomusicology. For about a year she went back to playing music on the streets, before getting a job in a Greek nightclub “I became very interested in Greek fiddle music,” she said.

Svigals then read an ad: somebody was forming a klezmer band. The person who placed the ad disappeared, but everyone else came together and formed the Klezmatics. “This was really early on in the revival,” she said. “I really fell for klezmer music in particular, because it was related to music I’d grown up with my family.” 

While klezmer was not considered a career path by their parents, work snowballed. And it turned into a living. “The surprises just kept coming, culminating in being awarded an honorary degree,” she said. “[This] was not anything that had ever been on my radar, although I always wanted to be a doctor. but didn’t want to do that school work and write a dissertation. So I was pleased.”

Svigals was amazed by the caliber of her fellow honorees. Rabbi Arthur Green, another honorary degree recipient, gave the commencement address. He’s a JTS alum and founding dean and retired rector of the Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College. Other honorary degree recipients include Dr. Philip Ozuah, President and CEO of Montefiore Medicine, and Rabbi David Saperstein, Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy at the Union for Reform Judaism and former director for 40 years of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

So what’s next for Svigals? Plenty.

An award-winning composer, she has also created powerful, inventive compositions, including music for the Kronos Quartet, as well as scores for silent films, dance and theater productions.  Svigals and pianist Donald Sosin are currently touring internationally with their unique violin and piano scores for Jewish-themed silent films. 

After meeting at a silent film festival in Italy in 2017, the two recorded their first original score for the 1923 German film “The Ancient Law,” soon followed by “The City Without Jews.” Their third score is for the 1992 satire “The Man Without a World,” by San Diego-based performance artist Eleanor Antin. These concerts, performed alongside screened silent films, are supported by a private foundation.

“We play synagogues, we play JCC, we’ve played Lincoln Center,” Sviglas said. “We play all over the world.”