Double Bill: Electric Rose / Chaia

Electric Rose
The Rose Cohen Experience 

Obscure Jewish-Ukrainian songs and stories of Rose Cohen, electro-acoustically reimagined by multi-instrumentalists Ilya Shneyveys and Sarah Myerson.

Ilya Shneyveys and Cantor Sarah Myerson discovered the unique voice of Rose Cohen through a 2022 YIVO commission. Interviewed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in 1968, Rose Cohen was born in 1897 near Kyiv and emigrated to Toronto as a young woman. Descended from a line of rabbi-cantors, she brought with her a fascinating repertoire of Yiddish ballads, Hebrew prayers and Ukrainian folk songs. 

Sarah and Ilya breathe new life into the intertwined stories of Rose Cohen and her songs’ characters. Atmospheric soundscapes, electronic and acoustic instruments, lo-fi beats, rich vocal harmonies, sampled early recordings and interview fragments transform these obscure songs into lush, immersive worlds.

Chaia 
Yiddish Electronic  

Yiddish electronic artist Chaia weaves together accordion, vocals, and archival samples, inviting audiences to engage with ritual, intergenerational trauma, and the echoes of ancestral memory.

Raised in the klezmer tradition, Chaia was mentored by Yiddish music pioneers Hankus Netsky, Jeff Warschauer, and Basya Schechter. Drawing on often never-before-heard archival recordings and personal collections, she leads audiences on a meditative journey through Yiddish sound worlds shaped by revolution, diaspora, and ancestral healing.

For this concert, Chaia focuses on material from the newly digitized Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JPLA) at The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, alongside additional archival recordings connected to the Jewish Labor Bund.