The project’s concept is reframing ancestral Jewish melodies, passed down aurally, in a creative music setting. Teiku is a creative music ensemble led by Michigan based composers, improvisers, and performers Josh Harlow on piano and Jonathan Taylor on drums. They will perform with bassist John Lindberg, and saxophonist Peter Formanek. The group is focused on the interpretation, preservation, and recomposition of aurally transmitted Jewish family melodies.

Jonathan Taylor and Josh Harlow were both raised Jewish, claiming ancestors from the Ukraine, in the villages of Bershnitz and Monasterishtche. While the Ukrainian-Jewish communities in these villages have long since disappeared, victims of pogroms and the Holocaust, some traditions remain amongst the diaspora. Strikingly, both grew up with a set of songs, intended to be sung on Passover, that are traced back to their respective ancestral villages and are, so far as they know, completely unique to their families.

Upon discovering this amazing…