Our dedicated
Organizing Team!
Rachel Leader
Rachel Leader (she/her) is a klezmer violinist, cultural organizer, and educator based in Western Massachusetts. Rachel is a member of award-winning klezmer band Mamaliga, as well as founding member of klezmer bands Burikes, A Glezele Tey, and Magid Ensemble. Rachel has toured internationally and served as faculty at festivals including Yiddish New York, KlezKanada, and Yiddish Summer Weimar, and is a recipient of the 2021 Klezmer New Leaders Fellowship.
In 2018, Rachel began hosting gatherings at her family’s land in Cummington, MA — bringing community together with klezmer music, nourishing food, and meaningful hand-crafted spaces. Rachel’s passion for building vibrant community led her to co-found KlezCummington in 2021 with her dad, Emmett, and her dear friends and collaborators listed here. She loves music, soccer, and popcorn most of all!
Director, Core Organizer, Co-founder
Ariel Shapiro
Ariel (they/them) is a musician, cultural organizer, cook, and multidisciplinary artist based in so-called Northampton, MA. Having grown up playing classical flute and piano, finding klezmer music in 2008 and the accordion in 2011 were both life-changing revelations, and Ariel’s life has been shaped by these two magnetic forces ever since! Ariel is a founding member of klezmer bands A Glezele Tey and Burikes, as well as a core organizer of The People's Puppet Parade, a twice-yearly parade/spectacle performance that brings together intergenerational community to build large-scale art and participatory, homegrown theater.
Ariel brings a deep love for nourishing people to the KlezCummington team, having honed her skills cooking for large groups at an electricity-free education center in Missouri and as a professional cook at Pinewoods. Ariel has also spent many years developing skills in collective process, facilitation, and relational organizing, including training with AORTA, the UMass Alliance for Community Transformation, and Restorative Circles. When not playing accordion or organizing community events, Ariel can be found tending many community garden plots, biking around town as a worker-owner of Pedal People Cooperative, and creating pottery, block prints, and art of all kinds!
Core Organizer, Co-founder, Head Chef
Ozzy Irving Gold-Shapiro
Ozzy Irving Gold-Shapiro (they/them) is a curious historian, Yiddishist, musician, and raconteur. They fell in love with Yiddish in 2013 while traveling through (today’s) Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania as a participant on the Helix Project and have continued to work in the Yiddish world, tinkering around in both dusty & digital archives at the Yiddish Book Center. They believe that the past is alive and always changing and love looking in new places for old answers. Outside of Burikes, they have been involved as a researcher, translator, and performer in a number of archival Yiddish-based performance projects that seek to destabilize traditional historical narratives including Jenny Romaine’s “The Revival of the Gravediggers of Uzda,” (a spectacle theatre piece about the oft overlooked neighborly relationships between Yiddish-speaking Jews and Muslim Tatars in Belarus) and “Vu bistu geven?/Where Have You Been?” (a film about the history of the land where Klezkanada takes place.) (Romaine is the a founding member of Great Small Works and the musical director of Jennifer Miller’s Circus Amok.) They have witnessed the power of music and theater in struggles for liberation, and love forging connections, building community on and off the stage, and creating joyous and raucous occasions for local mutual aid work.
Photo Credit: Neil Shapiro
Core Organizer, Co-founder
Clarissa Lyons
Clarissa is a musician and mechanic who loves playing tunes and creating community.
After years of playing clarinet, she wound her way to klezmer and in 2018 became a founding member of klezmer band Burikes. She loves playing music for occasions of celebration and for no occasion at all. She plays for joy and for sadness, for grandparents and for grandchildren, for friends and for strangers.
In addition to music, Clarissa has taught at various nature and wilderness expedition programs throughout the northeast. She loves traveling by foot, by bike, and by boat on journeys both strenuous and spacious, making fire, cooking food, singing songs, and growing connections along the way.
Clarissa now lives on the west side of the Connecticut River near the Pocumtuck ridge.
Co-founder
A note from our dear friend, collaborator, badass clarinetist, carpenter, & KlezCummington co-founder: Clarissa Lyons!
“Hello friends and community!
I'm writing to let you all know that I'm stepping down from the KlezCummington organizing team. KlezCummington has been such a special and personal festival that has brought me joy, meaning, and inspiration. I've loved meeting many new people (you!), and have been awed by the way everyone has helped make this event happen. Thank you for the late-night jam sessions, for the evening nigunim, and for doing the lunch dishes! I look forward to coming together for more soon.”