Christina & The Zamlers: The Lost Klezmer Music of the An-ski Expeditions

On Saturday, February 21, Or Shalom, the Peretz Centre, and KlezWest will welcome Trampled Manuscripts: The Lost Klezmer Music of the An-ski Expeditions, an evening of music, history, dance and song with Christina & The Zamlers.

With pieces ranging from lively freylekhs and skotchnes, to elegant mazurkas, nigunim, and soulful Jewish wedding ritual melodies, accordionist Christina Crowder and guest artists will lead us on an expedition into a treasure trove of music that was collected over a hundred years ago, but long thought to be lost.

Saturday, February 21st, 2026

Doors open at 7:30pm (show starts at 8pm)

This event is part of Or Shalom's long-running Light in Winter Concert Series and will take place at their temporary location at Cityview Church (4370 Sophia St., Vancouver, BC). The building is wheelchair-accessible and has bathrooms with chair rails. For more information, please see Or Shalom's website or contact their office.

Admission: By donation, minimum $18 (suggested amount: $36)

Sponsored and funded by Or Shalom, the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, the Shaya Kirman Memorial Foundation for Yiddish Culture Fund, and KlezWest

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It all starts in the summer of 1913. Led by Yiddish author and ethnographer S. An-sky, a group sets off to collect Jewish stories, music and artifacts in the Russian Pale of Settlement. This earnest group of strangers from St. Petersburg manage to convince musicians from various Jewish shtetls to hand over their personal manuscripts. However, the scores end up in a Kyiv archive, and are long assumed to be lost to the ravages of the twentieth century.

Then, in 2017, a chance encounter in Tokyo between a Yiddish dance teacher and a musicologist leads to the unlikely release of thousands of these unique musical manuscripts. With help from klezmer enthusiasts throughout the world, and as part of the Klezmer Institute's Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP), the tunes are gradually transcribed and shared online, enabling klezmer musicians and scholars to bring them back to life for audiences all over the world to enjoy.

Trampled Manuscripts embodies S. Ansky’s vision of Jewish folklore as a living “Oral Torah” of Jewish culture, inviting musicians and dancers to interpret and reimagine it for the present day and to celebrate the Jewishness encoded in these melodies with audiences around the world. The Klezmer Institute’s Executive Director Christina Crowder will present this program together with musicians Jimmy Austin, Mae Kessler, and dance leader Maia Brown.

As a follow up to the performance, the next day (Sunday, Feb. 22nd) Christina Crowder and Maia Brown will offer Klezmer music and Yiddish dance workshops, open to all. Learn more and register here

Meet the Performers

Christina Crowder (accordion and tsimbl) has been studying and performing klezmer music and Ashkenazic dance for thirty years, beginning in Budapest, Hungary in 1993 as a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye. Based in New Haven, CT, she is executive director of the Klezmer Institute, where she oversees the Klezmer Archive Project, the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP), and year-round programming in support of Ashkenazic expressive culture. Ashkenazic dance music is a passion along with a continued exploration of the Moldavian/Bessarabian corner of the klezmer universe.

Maia Brown is a Yiddish musician and dance-leader, writer, translator, visual artist and educator on unceded Duwamish, Coast Salish land in Seattle, Washington. Brown has a background in oral history and fine art, she received her Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College. She is the founder of anti-fascist Yiddish folk-punk duo, Brivele, and wears different hats as a cultural worker in communities combining research, direct action, art, education, and celebration in the work of getting free.

Jimmy Austin inherited both his first name and first trombone from his grandfather. He brings his intense, expressive, and collaborative style to a wide variety of projects around the Pacific Northwest and is particularly active in Seattle’s Yiddish music community, playing with such groups as the brass band, Shpilkis, the trio, Tzepl, and Christina and the Zamlers. In addition to performing, Jimmy organizes jam sessions, workshops, and guest artist residencies in Seattle with The Rhapsody Project and other community and heritage music organizations. In 2023, Jimmy was selected as a master artist in the Washington State Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Program. Outside of the Yiddish music scene, Jimmy is a long-time band-member of Hot Damn Scandal, from Bellingham, WA, and is a musician and assistant composer for Sara Porkalob’s award-winning musical, Dragon Lady.

Mae Kessler is a violinist, cultural organizer and educator based in Olympia, Washington who is passionate about increasing local and regional opportunities to learn, share and celebrate Yiddish instrumental music and culture. With roots in the DIY and punk music scene of early 2000’s Olympia, she has performed, recorded and toured with various punk, experimental, metal and original folk groups over the years including the critically acclaimed project Cinder Well. She currently performs with klezmer trio Tzepl, the PNW version of Christina and the Zamlers, and the klezmer and Scandinavian duo Varda. She was awarded a grant from the Yiddish Book Center’s Yiddish Arts and Culture Initiative for Jewish Communities and is part of their 2025-2026 cohort, and serves locally as a board member for the Downtown Olympia Creative District.