Zoë Aqua and her Transylvanian String Band + The Solomon Diaries

Zoë Aqua and her Transylvanian String Band: From the Open Place

with Sam Sadigursky and Nathan Koci: The Solomon Diaries

Two fabulous ensembles open the year for the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music in one of our favorite venues, the Multicultural Arts Center. We are delighted to present Zoë Aqua and her Transylvanian String Band for their album release tour of From the Open Place and Sam Sadigursky and Nathan Koci's The Solomon Diaries.

From the Open Place

From the Open Place is the most recent product of a deep and fruitful collaboration between American klezmer fiddler Zoë Aqua and three stellar folk musicians from the Transylvania region of Romania: Gergely Réman (cimbalom), Kálmán Szopos (brácsa), and Károly Dénes (bass). Listeners will recognize the “unrelenting cimbalom, grinding basslines and deep trance drones from the Romanian brácsa (chordal viola)” from their previous releases including In A Sea of Stars , which garnered a 5/5-star review from Songlines Magazine. The band is known for their vital and pulsing sound which appeals to fans of fiddle music of all kinds, including bluegrass and old-time music.

Aqua’s compositional style combines elements of klezmer and Yiddish song with Hungarian, Romanian, and Romani folk music, and is truly unique in the world music scene.

The songs are dark and revelatory in equal measure. The title From the Open Place refers to the vast open spaces of the American West which the band experienced on their first US tour, when they visited 7 Western states, as well as to their commitment to collaborative music-making which transcends borders, nationalities and genres, and to the place of openness from which they hope listeners approach their music.

Listen to the new album: https://zoeaqua.bandcamp.com/album/from-the-open-place

The Solomon Diaries

Songs of freedom, rebellion, celebration, tradition, independence, loss, hope, decay and renewal - this is the music of Sam Sadigursky and Nathan Koci's The Solomon Diaries. Originally inspired by the remarkable rise and fall of the Borscht Belt region, the music brings together an eclectic array of Jewish music traditions, improvisation, global influences and a classical chamber intimacy developed over the course of seven years of close collaborations between Sadigursky and Koci. They've released five albums of this music for Adyàropa Records, and have performed at Yidstock as well as NYC's iconic Eldridge Street Synagogue:


“Sadigursky’s expressive clarinet speaks and soars on original compositions, old and new.” - The American Jewish World

“A monumental achievement… In Sadigursky’s musical vision, new music, folk, jazz, chamber music, and Klezmer blend into a unique and highly personal cross-genre hybrid. The interplay between the duet partners is strikingly telepathic… In its totality, the instrumental cycle addresses the 20th century Jewish experience, but its spirit is generous and open enough to reflect that of any population of immigrants and refugees, transcending the particular to address the promises of the American dream, both realized and broken.” - Seth Rogovoy, Chronogram

“Both clarinet and accordion work by moving air - one through human breath and the other mechanically - together creating something organic that defines their sound beyond any genre. It is in this flow of air and sound that Sadigursky has found his place: somewhere between jazz and classical, klezmer and contemporary, memory and invention, making music that connects cultural history with inevitable change.” - Lawrence Pryer, The Tonearm

“Such poignance that your heart may be buoyed rather than broken” - Will Layman, PopMatters

Listen to the Solomon Diaries: https://samsadigursky.bandcamp.com/music

About Zoë Aqua

In a 150 year-old synagogue in Satu Mare, Romania, Zoë Aqua felt an inexplicable at-home-ness. The vaulted ceilings were painted with stars and every note pouring from her violin was bathed in heavenly reverb. An enthusiastic audience came out to hear her play compositions inspired by the lost music of the Jewish people that populated the city before WWII, assimilation and emigration broke the chain of cultural transmission. From 2021-2023, Aqua lived in Romania doing ethnographic research on a Fulbright grant to study Transylvanian folk music. Her performances in two venerable synagogues appear on her forthcoming live album, In a Sea of Stars, due out in Summer 2025. It’s a collaboration with three musicians from the folk revival scene in Cluj.  

The Transylvanian fiddle sounds like the countryside looks — wild, raw and earthy. Every region has its own hyper-local style. In Mezőség, for instance, the powerhouse string bands emit a tidal wave of sound with hardcore melodies underpinned by purely major chords. In Szék, Aqua learned to play the brácsa (a flat-bridged viola) from a shepherd with 780 sheep, 5 goats and 4 dogs, which he used to scare away bears and ward off local thieves. In Maramureș, a rural region in the northern mountains, Aqua travelled the rutted roads full of horse carts and tractors to meet homesteading musicians whose minor modes and slow slides had traces of the kind of Jewish music prevalent there before the war. 

Aqua was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. She played Suzuki violin while her dad led songs at their local synagogue and played klezmer music on the weekends. After college, Aqua lived in Brooklyn for a decade amidst a generous and progressive Jewish community that stoked her love of old klezmer recordings and her fascination with Eastern European music. She co-founded two klezmer bands, Tsibele and Farnakht, and was the full-time understudy for the Klezmatics’ Lisa Gutkin in the Broadway production of “Indecent.” Long passionate about teaching, Zoë holds two degrees in music education. She has performed at Philadelphia Folk Festival, Klezkanada Festival, Yiddish New York Festival and has toured in Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey. 

About Sam Sadigursky and Nathan Koci

Multi-reedist and composer Sam Sadigursky performs across a remarkably broad spectrum of musical landscapes. As a leader, his boundary-pushing discography includes The Words Project—a critically acclaimed four-album series based on poetry and text released on New Amsterdam Records—and his current multi-album collaboration with accordionist Nathan Koci, The Solomon Diaries (Adhyàropa Records).

He currently tours as a member of The Philip Glass Ensemble, and has also toured and recorded with an eclectic roster of artists, including Brad Mehldau, Fred Hersch, David Byrne, Tom Jones, Edmar Castaneda, and the Mingus Orchestra. He's featured on three Grammy-nominated albums with Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, as well as Taylor Eigsti’s Grammy-winning album A Tree Falls. From 2017 to 2019, he was the onstage clarinetist for the 10-time Tony Award-winning, Grammy, and Emmy-recognized Broadway musical The Band’s Visit.

Nathan Koci is an accordionist, multi-instrumentalist, and music director that most recently worked with Justin Peck and Jackie Sibbles Drury on Sufjan Stevens’ ILLINOISE on Broadway, as well as music-directing OKLAHOMA! on Broadway, and most recently the acclaimed opera SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER at Bard Summerscape and Opera Philadelphia. He has also performed with William Kentridge, Dana Lyn, Guy Klucevsek, and Ray Charles and is a part of the classical group The Hands Free.