On June 22nd, over 300 people packed the auditorium of PS 212 in Jackson Heights, Queens to enjoy Peru Cultura Viva! a presentation of CTMD's Pachamama Peruvian Arts program. The evening featured the students of Pachamama Peruvian Arts, their master instructors and choir of Abya Yala in a theaterical performance exploring the Incan conquest and mestizo culture. Pachamama students (age 8-17) have been studying Advanced Afro-Peruvian percussion, zampona (panpipe), and the dances: carnaval de Arequipa and shipiba since February and now begin summer classes. Pachamama Peruvian Arts invites new students to join the program in September.

This month's Master Artist Profile features Luz Pereira, a master dancer and dance teacher who serves as Pachamama's Assistant Director. And we're so lucky to have her - Luz was a key player in the revival of Peruvian traditional performing arts in Peru during the 1960s, an experience that helps inform her work in keeping Peruvian culture alive and vibrant in New York. Click on the below link to read about Luz's story, authored by CTMD intern Naomi Sturm of Bowdoin College:

Wednesday, July 11: Pachamama Peruvian Arts summer classes begin at P.S. 212, 34-25 82nd Street, Jackson Heights, Queens.

Saturday, July 14: CTMD Touring Artists McCollough Sons of Thunder perform shout gospel with their brass band ensemble at Kingsborough College. Admission free. For more information see Kingsborough College Calendar (5:00PM)

Saturday, July 21: CTMD Touring Artists Viento de Agua perform Puerto Rican bomba and plena at Kingsborough College. Admission free. For more information see Kingsborough College Calendar (8:30PM)

Thursday, August 9: CTMD Touring Artists Los Clarinetes Magicos present a free night of Dominican merengue music at the Harlem Meer Festival in Central Park. Admission free. For more information see Harlem Meer Festival website (6:00PM)

Sunday, August 12: Heritage Sunday at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors — The Power of Music: Songs of Love and Struggle An outdoor concert featuring Puerto Rican bomba and plena by Viento de Agua, West African jaliya with Abdoulaye Diabate and Super Manden, and urban Albanian folk songs by Merita Halili and the Raif Hyseni Orchestra on the plazas of Lincoln Center, West 65th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. Free. (4:00-7:00PM)

Sunday, August 26: CTMD Touring Artist Vodou Drums of Haiti perform as part of Lincoln Center out of Doors's La Casita program. Admission Free. For more information see the Lincoln Center website (1:00PM)

Tuesday, August 28: CTMD Touring Artist Vodou Drums of Haiti perform at a special Lincoln Center La Casita event held at the Pregones Theater in the Bronx. Admission Free. For more information see the Pregones Theater Website (5:00PM)

Sunday, September 16: New York World Festival — Music Around the Mediterranean A collaboration with World Music Institute and Central Park SummerStage featuring Moroccan Gnawan singer Hassan Hakmoun, legendary Greek Island singer Amalia Papastefanu, Greek clarinetist Lefteris Bournias, Pontic Greek lyra player Chris Tiktapanides, Dimonis de Catalunya from Mallorca, Spain and Orchestre de Tanger. Central Park SummerStage (1:30-7:00PM)

Thursday, September 20: CTMD Touring Artists Retumba present Afro-Caribbean music and dance at University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire. For more information see University website

Friday, September 28: Launch of the fourth year of Pachamama Peruvian Arts featuring demonstrations of Peru's performing arts by master teachers at PS 212, 34-25 82nd Street, Jackson Heights, Queens (7:00-10:00PM)

Sunday, September 30: Yiddish Dance Classes begins in collaboration with the 92nd Street Y. Six three-hour sessions will be taught by Walter Zev Feldman on Sundays: September 30, October 21, November 18, January 20, February 17, March 30, April 27, and June 1. Information on registration coming soon!

Friday, October 7: Pachamama Peruvian Arts fall semester of classes in a variety of music and dance forms begin weekly at PS 212 (3:30-6:30PM)

Thursday, October 11: First monthly Tantshoyz (Dance House) in collaboration with the JCC in Manhattan & Workmen's Circle. Yiddish dance led by Zev Feldman with live klezmer music. Dancers of all skill levels welcome. At the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street (7:00-10:00PM)

Thursday, November 1: Second monthly Tantshoyz (Dance House) in collaboration with the JCC in Manhattan & Workmen's Circle. Yiddish dance led by Zev Feldman with live klezmer music. Dancers of all skill levels welcome. At the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street (7:00-10:00PM)

Thursday, December 6: Third monthly Tantshoyz (Dance House) in collaboration with the JCC in Manhattan & Workmen's Circle. Yiddish dance led by Zev Feldman with live klezmer music. Dancers of all skill levels welcome. At the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street (7:00-10:00PM)

Sunday, December 9: Yiddish Dance Research Symposium A day-long session at New York University featuring leading researchers and practitioners of traditional Yiddish dance along with scholars of Yiddish culture and related dance genres. In the evening prior to the event, a participatory dance workshop will take place featuring leading dance teachers and a live klezmer band.

Sidiki Conde, founder and director of CTMD Touring Artists ensemble Tokounou, which performs the traditional dance of the West African nation of Guinea, has been honored with a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship Award by the National Endowment for the Arts. Conde, who lost all use of his legs after being stricken with polio at age fourteen, developed a remarkable ability to interpret traditional Guinean dance using only his hands and upper body. In Guinea, he founded Message de Espoir (the Message of Hope), a music and dance ensemble that worked to change perceptions of people with disabilities. In the late-1980s and early 1990s Conde performed, choreographed and composed music for the renowned Les Merveilles de Guinea ensemble. Upon immigrating to the U.S. in 1997, he soon founded Tokounou, with which he performs internationally.

The NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award is the federal government's highest honor bestowed on folk artists, and Conde joins a number of other Heritage Award winners who have been closely associated with CTMD through the years - a list that includes Epirot Greek clarinetist Pericles Halkias, shout gospel band leader (and CTMD Touring Artist) Edward Babb, Yiddish poet/songwriter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, Pontic Greek lyra player Ilias Kementzides, Irish step dancer Donny Golden, Puerto Rican bomba and plena master Juan Gutierrez, Irish fiddler Liz Caroll, klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras, Palestinian violinist/oudist and composer Simon Shaheen, Bukharan Jewish singer Fatima Kuinova, Serbian tamburitsa master Adam Popovich, and Southern Italian musicians Giuseppe and Raffaela DeFranco. CTMD also extends its congratulations to our dear friend, klezmer drummer Elaine Hoffman Watts of Philadelphia, who was also recognized by NEA. For more on Conde's award, click the below link:

CTMD announces a new partnership with Manhattan's 92 St Y to offer a series of Yiddish dance classes beginning in September led by Walter Zev Feldman and other master dance leaders. Building on our hugely successful monthly Tantshoyz (dance house) series at the JCC in Manhattan, the 92 St. Y classes will provide participants with a more in-depth opportunity to explore classic Yiddish dances such as the sher, hora, freylekhs and bulgar. Special focus will also be given to the expressive power and gestures of solo dance. Classes will feature live klezmer music performed by Jake Shulman-Ment on violin and Pete Rushefsky on tsimbl (hammered dulcimer). Eight three-hour sessions will be held on the following Sundays: September 30, October 21, November 18, January 20, February 17, March 30, April 27, and June 1. Stay tuned for more information, or call Pete Rushefsky at 212-571-1555 ext. 36 or email prushefsky@ctmd.org.

We were saddened to hear of the recent passage of Lazaros Charasiades, a popular performer known well from his Ethnic Folk Arts Center performances with the Pericles Halkias Family Orchestra. Charasaides, who was Halkias's brother-in-law, played laouto (pear-shaped lute) and daire (large tambourine). The Halkias ensemble were prominent performers in the Greek nightlcubs on Manhattan's Eighth Avenue that had their heyday in the 1960's, and were much in demand at weddings and other celebrations in the Epirot Greek community. Pericles Halkias passed away a couple of years ago; we'll provide some remembrances in an upcoming Global Beat of the Boroughs eNewsletter.

CTMD's last Vechornytsi (Ukrainian village dance party) at the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant on June 30th was a whirling, twirling, hand- clapping success! Presented as part of CTMD's new Ukrainian Wave Community Cultural Initiative, the second dance evening in an ongoing series, the evening drew twice the crowd of the very first dance on April 21st. Dance master Tamara Chernyakhovska had nearly 50 students on the dance floor learning a wide variety of Ukrainian dance forms throughout the evening, accompanied by the lively sounds of Carpathian mountain music by the acoustic folk group (and CTMD Touring Artists) Cheres.

The restaurant kept steaming plates of tasty Ukrainian dishes coming throughout the night. Between dance sets, as bandurist Julian Kytasty taught visitors to sing a traditional Ukrainian folksong, O Hylia Hylia, the crowd broke out immediately into spontaneous harmonies, Ukrainian style. Additional singers and musicians joined in with the band throughout the program. Irene Nasaduke, who has traveled with her son from Stamford, Connecticut for the last two Vechornytsis, offered the following comment in our guestbook: "Couldn't be better! Keep up the great work! Bring us more of the same!"

Watch the CTMD website for notice of the next Vechornytsis in September and October. October's Vechornytsi will feature western Canadian-Ukrainian prairie polka music and dancing, with special guests from Edmonton, Alberta: Ukrainian cymbaly (hammered dulcimer) player and scholar Brian Cherwick, and Ukrainian- Canadian folk dance scholar/dance master Andriy Nahachewsky.

Additionally CTMD's Ukrainian Wave Community Cultural Initiative will have a fieldwork and information table all day Saturday, July 14th, as part of "Soyuzivka," one of New York's largest Ukrainian arts and cultural festivals at the Ukrainian National Foundation's Soyuzivka Heritage Center, 216 Foordmore Road, Kerhonkson, New York. This year's festival features leading vocalists and dance bands from Ukraine and North America, as well as Ukrainian craft demonstrations, food and craft vendors, and a Ukrainian film fest.

Visitors to the Ukrainian Wave Table will be invited to share, on video or audiotape, their family's immigration stories, sing a song, or show what Ukrainian folk dances they can remember doing in the old country or here in the United States. The fieldwork table will give Ukrainian Wave CCI team members a chance to make new friends in the greater Ukrainian community in New York State, identify additional folk artists, and provide information about upcoming village dance parties, concerts, music education projects, and other activities by CTMD's Ukrainian CCI. For directions to Soyuzivka and a complete listing of performers and other attractions, visit their website.

On Friday, July 13 CTMD Touring Artist Abdoulaye Diabate leads the experimental African jazz Source Band at the Zinc Bar, 90 West Houston Street at 10PM. For more information see the Zinc Bar website.

It was great to watch trumpeter Frank London (who recently won a Grammy with his band The Klezmatics) perform with members of the New York Bandura Ensemble at our April 28th concert "Echoes of Ukrainian Modernism" at the Ukrainian Museum. On Sunday, July 15 at 4pm Celebrate Brooklyn & Workmen's Circle will present Frank London's Yiddish Carnival. For this concert of old- and new-school Jewish music, London will be joined by a cast of major guest artists... including The Klezmatics; television and theater star Fyvush Finkel; a rare performance by legendary Yiddish rocker Wolf Krakowski; Cuban Jewish percussionist Roberto Rodriguez; Rolling Stone's #1 non-English group of 2006, Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars featuring Brazilian percussionists Maracatú New York; Yiddish divas Joanne Borts and Adrienne Cooper; and the Festival Latin Jewish Carnival Orchestra & Social Justice Sing. For more information go to the Celebrate Brooklyn website.

There's still time to see the movie "Gypsy Caravan," which runs through at least Thursday, July 19th at City Cinemas Village East on 2nd Avenue. Gypsy Caravan features concert and behind-the- scenes footage of a tour presented by our friends at World Music Institute in 2001. Performers include Romania's Taraf de Haidouks, the Moldavian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia, Antonio de Pipa's Flamenco Ensemble, Macedonian singer Esma Redzepova, and Maharaja from North India. For times consult the City Cinemas Village East website.