In the 1990s, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Jewish families from the former USSR emigrated to Israel, Germany, and N. America.
Singer Sveta Kundish's family was part of this great wave of movement, relocating from Ukraine to Israel in 1995. Years later her parents discovered a set of reel-to-reel recordings, made by her grandfather Motik Bezman in the 1970s and '80s, which had survived for the past 40 years, and which chronicle the day to day life, songs, and stories of her family in the shtetl Ovrutsch, Ukraine – part of a Jewish life there that has all but disappeared.
Using these recordings as inspiration, Kundish and accordionist Patrick Farrell collaborate to tell the story of one Ukrainian Jewish family, from Kundish's Great-Grandfather - a cantor in the synagogue in Ovrutsch - through her present life in Germany as a performer and cantor herself.
Woven around the story are songs in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Ukrainian, and Italian, either performed live by this acclaimed duo or brought back from the past through these rediscovered recordings. Family photos from the past 100 years, projected onto a screen next to the performers, give the audience a window into typical Jewish life in Ukraine during the years of the USSR, and into the widespread experience of emigration in the years after.

Sveta KUNDISH - voice, guitar
Patrick FARRELL - accordion

Avant-garde and strikingly new, or simple and traditionalist, Farrell's original song compositions are brought to life by these two widely respected performers of klezmer and Yiddish song.
Focusing on new settings of verse by 20th - and 21st - century women poets from North America, Europe, and Israel, the songs portray intimate and emotional inner realms of love, longing, motherhood, private joys, and private terrors.
Kundish and Farrell warmly invite audiences into this poetic musical world they have been creating together since 2013.
The combination of rigorous and subtle precision, flights of virtuosity, and emotional presence they bring to the stage make their performances thrilling and satisfying experiences.

Sveta Kundish is a soprano vocalist  who performs a wide variety of Jewish music throughout Europe. She appears with Voices of Ashkenaz and the Diwan der Kontinente Project among others, and is a regular faculty member at Yiddish Summer Weimar. Born in Ukraine and later moving to Israel, Kundish holds degrees from Tel Aviv University and the Prayner Konservatorium in Vienna, and in 2017 completed a degree in Cantorial Studies from the Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Potsdam, Germany.

"…outstanding intuitive interplay between the two… phenomenal in its musical colors. They develop this music simply and purposefully, and show that all the beauty and qualities of Yiddish music live on in this form and soar to new artistic and emotional heights.“
H. Schultz

"Together they form a congenial duo which is carrying Yiddish music into the future. With virtuoso accordion playing and shimmering vocals Farrell and Kundish know how to delight the audience."
M. Fritsch