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"While Mama's hands grow tired of turning pages, Daddy keeps his hands awake all night, running the presses for the New York paper til the dawn's earliest light.
 In my cradle, I am dreaming

bigger things."
© Judith-Kate Friedman

from Bigger Things

 

"You will play like the water rolls, like the wind gets wild and the night grows cold, and heals the ground and the cracks of day, comes out like a ray of the sun

on fire."

 © Judit
h-Kate Friedman
from A Spider's Tale

 



 

Judith-Kate Friedman sings.

It's said she sang before she could talk.

An internationally acclaimed touring artist,

award-winning songwriter, and music catalyst,

she is equally esteemed for her public concerts and recordings, and for her off-stage work igniting sparks of passion, musical collaboration, and truth-telling in communities of all kinds.
 
Born on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Judith-Kate

grew up listening to Bach, Vivaldi, Yiddish poetry and song, Broadway, Belafonte and Beethoven. Her parents' recorder duets filled the small apartment; their love for music

and the importance of art in life opened doors for both

their children to later find livelihoods in music, full-time.
 
Judith-Kate's career began at age six, when she left a matinee of "Fiddler on the Roof" determined to become a performer. She had her first hand-me-down guitar at ten and spent her high school years writing songs and poetry, performing, directing plays, studying ballads, blues, and anthropology, and discovering dance, film, and jazz.

Around this time she heard Pete Seeger, Bernice Johnson Reagon and others who carried voices of social change through song. Amidst their sounds and stories, rooted in history, rebellion, and authenticity, branching and flowering with abundant fruit that could feed generations, Judith-Kate found her deeper calling.
 

                       "Urgent and memorable historical ballads, ecological anthems, inspirational couplets

and unguarded love songs" 

Washington Post.


She attended Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, graduating with a degree in literature, poetry writing and folklore with studies in ethnomusicology, mridangam (drum), and Karnatic (S. Indian) devotional singing. Over the next two decades from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area, Judith-Kate performed, toured and released recordings solo, and with renowned Jewish/World music a cappella ensemble Vocolot (vo'ko'lote'). She began serving as a cantorial soloist, produced world music programs for Pacifica Radio's KPFA-FM, curated the benefit concert series "Sounds for the Heart of Our Times" and other events featuring composers, poets, and performer/activists giving voice to diverse cultural perspectives across the generations.
 
As an eight-time California Arts Council grantee, Judith-Kate honed her community songwriting process with elders and youth, later founding the non-profit organization Songwriting Works™, which she currently serves as director.  In this role,

she has composed nearly 300 songs with 2800 people,

most of them elders over the age of 80.  She produced "Island on a Hill," the award-winning debut CD of Singers & Songwriters of the Jewish Home San Francisco, and performs with them in Nathan Friedkin's internationally acclaimed
documentary "A Specially Wonderful Affair."

   
Ever-informed by the generous splendor and wise counsel of the natural world, Judith-Kate moved to Washington State's

Olympic Peninsula in 2006.  She makes her home with mythologist, author, and singer Daniel Deardorff in

Port Townsend.