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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."
© Judith-Kate Friedman
from A Spider's Tale |
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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. |
