Hilda Bronstein

Award Winning Singer of Yiddish Song

Hilda visiting her roots in Warsaw

Born in London as the daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants, Hilda fell in love with the Yiddish language and Yiddish song at an early age. Yiddish Theatre was her inspiration. She trained as a singer at the Royal College of Music in London, but other priorities took over when she married, had a family, and later retrained, taking a doctorate and becoming a university lecturer in English Literature.

In 2003 she discovered that, while she had been otherwise involved, there had been a huge revival of interest in Yiddish language and music, so she decided to return to her long-forgotten first love. She brushed up her Yiddish and attended London's annual Klezfest, where she encountered the exciting sounds of the new wave of klezmer music. It was here that she tentatively sang her first solo in Yiddish after so many years. She has now performed at a number of venues, including the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank, and at The Centre for Jewish Studies, Yarnton Manor Oxford.

In May 2008 Hilda sang for an audience of 800 in the Concertgebeouw in Amsterdam when she participated in the International Jewish Music Festival and won the Mira Rafalowicz Prize for The Best Yiddish Song Interpretation. She was the Director of the Jewish Music Institute's Weekly Song School in London from 2005 to 2008. Here she taught Yiddish Song to groups of students who ranged from trained singers to those who professed to no previous experience out of the bath or shower! Her CD Hilda Bronstein Sings Yiddish Songs Old and New was launched internationally in February 2007. The recordings have been reviewed and broadcast extensively across Europe and the USA.

Hilda sings gems from the huge repertoire of Jewish Song including folk songs, festival songs, old Hasidic melodies, theatre songs, and music in the gipsy tradition. She also performs Yiddish songs newly composed in the Czech Republic and also in the former Soviet Union by Jews reconnecting with their faith. Together these songs, old and new, weave a gloriously colourful patchwork of Jewish culture - each one capturing some facet of Jewish life - from celebration to tragedy, from childhood to old age, from the joys of love and family to the trials of separation. She occasionally translates and sings some of these songs in English - to make them fully accessible to non-yiddish speakers.

Hilda is available for concerts, workshops and talks. To find out more, or to book her for your next event, call her on 07778 501215 or e-mail hilda@chiribim.com.

To see details of Hilda's forthcoming events just go to the diary page.