Michael Alpert is a pioneering figure of the Klezmer Revival and is internationally known for his performances and recordings of klezmer music with BRAVE OLD WORLD, Kapelye, and other groups. Raised in a Yiddish-speaking family, he is considered one of the finest traditional Yiddish singers today, and is recognized for his original Yiddish songs. A research associate at New York's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Mr. Alpert has conducted extensive research of traditional Jewish music and dance throughout the U.S. and Eastern Europe. He was musical director of the PBS Great Performances special "Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler's House," executive producer of the Angel/EMI CD of the same title, and appeared with Mr. Perlman on CBS' The Late Show with David Letterman. Program director of New York's 1982 Festival of Soviet Jewish Traditions, he produced the musical portion of the exhibition "A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union" at New York's Jewish Museum. Alpert was the music director for the play The People vs. The God of Vengeance, adapted and directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman (Drama '00), which was performed at Yale's conference "Sholem Asch Reconsidered" in 2000.
Ellen Rosand, professor of the history of music and chair
of the Yale College department of music, joined the Yale faculty in 1992. A
member of the editorial boards of numerous music-oriented publications, Professor
Rosand was editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society.
She edited the Grove Dictionary of Opera's section on Seventeenth Century Italian
Opera, and has written two books on the history of Italian opera and approximately
three dozen scholarly articles. 
Edwin Seroussi, Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology
and Director of the Jewish Music Research Center of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem since 2000, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and immigrated to Israel
in 1971. Held lectureships at the Department of Musicology of Tel-Aviv University
and at Levinsky Teachers' College in Tel-Aviv, before his full time appointment
at Bar-Ilan University in 1990, where he was head of the Department of Music
from 1994 to 1998. Was visiting professor at Binghamton University (New York,
1992/3) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1998/9). His works include:
"Schir Hakawod and the Liturgical Music Reforms in the Sephardi Community in
Vienna, ca. 1881-1925", Ph.D. diss. University of California, Los Angeles (1988);
Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Music in Nineteenth-century Reform Sources from
Hamburg: Ancient Tradition in the Dawn of Modernity (Jerusalem 1996); Cancionero
sefardí by Alberto Hemsi (Jerusalem 1995); Mizimrat Qedem: The Life and Music
of R. Isaac Algazi from Turkey (Jerusalem 1989) and more than forty articles
on diverse aspects of Sephardi music traditions. In the past years he has also
researched the popular music of Israel. His book (co-written with Motti Regev)
Popular Music and National Culture in Israel will be published by the University
of California Press. He recently contributed articles on Jewish and Israeli
music for major music encyclopedias such as The New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians Revised Edition and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. He
founded and edits Yuval: Music Series of the Jewish Music Research Center. Edited
several CDs of Jewish music, e.g. Titgadal ve-titkadash betokh Yerushalayim
- Jerusalem in Hebrew Prayers and Songs (Wergo, Berlin 1996) and Chants judéo-espagnols
de la Mediterraneé orientale (Inedit, Paris 1994).
Kay Kaufman Shelemay is the G. Gordon Watts Professor of
Music at Harvard University and a former Chair of the Department of Music. An
ethnomusicologist with specializations in musics of Africa, the Middle East,
and urban United States, she received her Ph.D. in Musicology from the University
of Michigan. The author of numerous articles and reviews, Shelemay's book "Music,
Ritual, and Falasha History" (1986), won both the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award
in 1987 and the Prize of the International Musicological Society in 1988. Other
major publications include "A Song of Longing. An Ethiopian Journey"
(1991); "Ethiopian Christian Chant. An Anthology" (3 vols., 1993-97),
co-authored with Peter Jeffery; and "Let Jasmine Rain Down. Song and Remembrance
Among Syrian Jews," University of Chicago Press, 1998 (finalist for the
National Jewish Book Award). She has edited the seven-volume "Garland Library
of Readings in Ethnomusicology," issued by Garland Publishing (1990). She
edited "Studies in Jewish Musical Traditions" in 2001 and is currently
co-editing "Pain and its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and
Culture," forthcoming from Harvard University Press. Her textbook, "Soundscapes.
Exploring Music in a Changing World," was published by W.W. Norton in 2001.
Shelemay was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has been awarded a number of major
postdoctoral fellowships, including grants from the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. She is Past-President
of the Society for Ethnomusicology and is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees
of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Shelemay was elected
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and was named
a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow at Harvard for 2001-2002. Before joining the
Harvard faculty in 1992, Shelemay taught at Columbia University, where she received
an award for distinguished teaching, at New York University, and at Wesleyan
University. 
Jeffrey Summit is the Executive Director of the Hillel Foundation
at Tufts University, where he also serves as Associate Chaplain and Adjunct
Associate Professor in the Department of Music. He holds a B.A. from Brandeis
University, an M.A.H.L. and Rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion. Rabbi Summit also holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Tufts
University where he studied ethnomusicology in Tufts interdisciplinary doctoral
program. His Rabbinic thesis focused on the traditions of Biblical cantillation
of the Yemenite community in Israel, where he spent a year doing field work
studying with Yemenite teachers and recording their musical/liturgical traditions.
His Master's thesis, The Role and Function of the Part-Time Cantor, contributed
research to the first major study of the American Cantorate, conducted under
the direction of Professor Mark Slobin of Wesleyan University. Rabbi Summit's
Ph.D. dissertation examined issues of identity and melody choice in Jewish liturgical
music and was published by Oxford University Press under the title "The
Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Music and Identity in Contemporary Jewish Worship."
He is presently conducting research on the music and liturgy of the Abayudaya
(Jewish people) of Uganda and together with photojournalist Richard Sobol is
the author of "Abayudaya: The Jews of Uganda" (Abbeville Press). Smithsonian
Folkways Recordings is also issuing an annotated compact disk of his field recordings
of the Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda. His book on Jewish music and identity
was awarded the Musher Publication Prize by the National Foundation for Jewish
Culture. Rabbi Summit is past-president of the National Hillel Professional
Association. He has forthcoming articles on "Nusah and Identity" in a volume
examining religion and music in America edited by Philip Bohlman (Oxford University
Press) and an article entitled "The Meaning of Our Melodies: Music and Identity
in Contemporary Jewish Worship" in Perspectives in Jewish Learning, Volume
VIII (The Spertus College of Judaica Press).