Ilya Shneyveys and Cantor Sarah Myerson present “Electric Rose: The Rose Cohen Experience.'' Ilya and Sarah discovered the unique Jewish song repertoire of Rose Cohen through her 1968 interview with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett on behalf of YIVO. Descended from a line of Rabbi-Cantors, Rose Cohen was born in 1897 near Kyiv (Ukraine) and emigrated to the New World as a young woman. Her fascinating repertoire includes Yiddish songs of love and loss, work and immigration, as well as Hebrew liturgical prayers and Ukrainian folk songs. Sarah’s and Ilya’s wildly electric arrangements re-imagine these songs in exciting new ways.
Sarah and Ilya are both accomplished multi-instrumentalist musicians, composers, arrangers and educators. Together, they are acclaimed for their deep knowledge of Yiddish and liturgical Hebrew music, neighboring culture musics (such as Balkan, Baltic, Slavic, Arabic, Sephardic and Greco-Turkish) and a range of other contemporary genres from rock to electronica. This program incorporates influences from all of those, welded together with dazzling spark!
Electric Rose was initially seeded by a research and performance grant from YIVO in 2022. Since then, Ilya and Sarah have brought this repertoire to concert stages and workshops in New York, California, and Germany. The debut album of this project was out on December 2025 on Borscht Beat Records. Ilya and Sarah are excited to take this album on tour, sharing this extraordinary live concert program with communities across North America and Europe — and we’re looking forward to having them at Der Nister!
Read more about them here.
Get tickets here.
Videos:
Electric Rose: Album Release Trailer
Electric Rose: live at Barbes 2024
Electric Rose: live at Coffee Mob 2024
Electric Rose: live at Jalopy 2022
LISTEN TO THE FULL ALBUM HERE