Celebrate the first night of Chanukah with the Nu Haven Kapelye and the CMI community! This year is a special one for our annual December 25 concert. Not only is it the start of the Festival of Lights, but it’s also our last December 25 with Cantor Giglio. This year in particular, let’s gather and celebrate Jewish culture together! We’ll perform Chanukah tunes, Yiddish songs, and a wide variety of traditional klezmer dances: joyful freylekhs, boisterous bulgars, reflective horas, energetic kolomeykes, and more. Don’t miss this warm, wonderful afternoon where music will bring us together.

The Nu Haven Kapelye is southern New England’s largest, sassiest, and saxiest klezmer ensemble. The Kapelye blends big band and klezmer traditions to play joyous, foot-tapping, tuchus-shaking arrangements of klezmer tunes and Yiddish song. Formed in the late 1990s, the multigenerational ensemble includes musicians of all ages. Each performance gets you dancing in the aisles, singing the classics, and shaking what your bubbe gave you! Today the Nu Haven Kapelye performs at a broad array of venues and events, from festivals to retirement homes, from bars to bar mitzvahs. In 2019 the Kapelye became a 501(c) nonprofit organization with a mission centering on the joy of playing and hearing klezmer, bringing it to new audiences, and ensuring the music's future.

The concert will serve as a drop-off location for non-perishable food donations to the Jewish Family Services food pantry, serving all of those in need in the greater New Haven community.

Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for seniors & children under 13, and $25 for families of 4 or more. Additional donations are greatly appreciated.

The Nu Haven Kapelye is southern New England’s largest, sassiest, and saxiest klezmer ensemble! Featuring a blend of big band and klezmer traditions, the Kapelye plays joyous, foot-tapping, tuchus-shaking arrangements of klezmer and Yiddish music from Eastern Europe and other locales. Each performance offers a unique slate of music that will have you dancing in the aisles, singing the classics, and shaking what your bubbe gave you! The Kapelye keeps audiences clapping and laughing, weeping and wondering, and embracing this timeless music.