Christina Crowder

Christina Crowder

(she/her/hers)

Music Director and Accordion, Indecent

Christina started playing Jewish music in Budapest, where she lived from 1993 to 2002. She is a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye—an ensemble dedicated to researching and performing traditional Eastern European Jewish music. The group did original research in Hungary and Romania and toured extensively in Europe. From 1999 to 2001, Christina and her husband John DeMetrick pursued Fulbright grants in Romania, working with elderly violinists who had played for Jewish communities before World War II. She continues this research with a project to document connections between klezmer, Moldavian and Greek music with Walter Zev Feldman at NYU Abu Dhabi, and she is the Operations Director of the newly-founded Klezmer Institute.

Christina lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she performs with her chamber klezmer quartet Bivolița (Bee-vo-lee-tsa). She also performs regularly with Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentschen, Alicia Svigals Klezmer Express, the Alexander Fiterstein Trio, the Goldenshtayn Kompaniye and the Dave Levitt Klezmer Trio. She has been a guest instructor in klezmer accordion and ensemble performance in the U.S., Canada and Europe.