The Bay Area's Jewish Music Festival Celebrates 25 Years 7/11

The Bay Area's Jewish Music Festival marks its two and a half decades with a day of free outdoor festivities for all ages and backgrounds at the Yerba Buena Gardens on July 11, 2010. Activities include instrument building workshops, instant choruses, klezmer jams, and performances running from kid-friendly to hip.

The festival is also presenting several groundbreaking multi-media and multi-platform performances. The edgy interpretation of Jewish roots has become part of the festival's mission. In July, the festival will hold the world premier of a commissioned music and dance piece by composer Dan Plonsey (Dan Plonsey's Bar Mitzvah); a strikingly sensual installation hinting at the secret lives of Babylonian women (The Bowls Project); and the rave-worthy, trans-Mediterranean electro-dance of Watcha Clan, direct from Marseilles, France.

Yet the party is about more than merely savoring Jewish music; it's about making it. That's why the July day in the park kicks off with an interactive, second-line parade led by the New Orleans Klezmer All-Starsfounding member, Glenn Hartman, and with family activities like an instrument petting zoo with "zookeepers" from the Mission- based Community Music Center and an instrument making workshop at CJM that turns found objects into sonorous sensations that will feature in the day's closing parade. Veteran kid's music performers Ira Levin , Gerry Tenney, Gary Lapow, and Ilana Jagoda will keep the younger crowd in the mood.

Additional information available at www.rockpaperscissors.biz/go/jewishfestival