Meet the 2009 Jews Got Talent Winner:

Shani Chabansky is a nineteen year old self-taught musician accompanied by an assortment of her musician friends from the Bay Area. Her music is strongly influenced by traditional old-time country, Irish/Celtic, Eastern European/Balkan music and the modern psychedelic-freakfolk singer/songwriter movement. She is mainly an acoustic guitarist and dabbles in various other stringed instruments such as mandolin and both tenor and 5-string banjo. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA and is very active in the UC Santa Cruz Jewish/Israeli community and activist organizations. She has a self-released album called Sassafras. www.myspace.com/chabandansky

Elana Neshkes
Berkeley Hillel

Elana Neshkes is a 22 year old Public Health major graduating from UC Berkeley. Growing up in Los Angeles, Elana was always passionate about music and spent her time singing in classical choirs and doing musical theater. At CAL, Elana has thrown herself into leadership in the Jewish community, including interning at Berkeley Hillel, teaching an Israeli folk dance class, and working to help create an interfaith community. She has also sang in an a Capella group and has been very active in her sorority. Elana remains very connected to Israel and was lucky enough to spend six months studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem last year.

Amelia Cavalier
San Francisco Hillel

Amelia Cavalier, age 21, was born in Walnut Creek and grew up in the East Bay. She has been performing in musical theater since she was seven and also performed last year with a New Orleans Jazz band while on a Hillel trip to rebuild the coast. After high school, Amelia spent one year volunteering and studying in Israel on Young Judaea Year Course, an experience that cemented her connection to Israel and changed her life. Amelia has been singing recreationally at every chance she gets since childhood, and she is very excited to have this opportunity so sing at Israel in the Gardens. Amelia is currently studying psychology at San Francisco State University, and she also enjoys hiking and playing the Ukulele.

David Katznelson

Pamela Rose

Pamela Rose, the Bay Area's own Jazz/Blues Queen, has thrilled audiences locally and internationally with her swinging, soulful style.  A regular on the jazz and blues club circuit, she also is a well respected bandleader, songwriter, and educator at the Jazz School in Berkeley.

With her dazzling newest album Wild Women of Song: Great Gal Composers of the Jazz Era, Rose makes a compelling case for the enduring contributions of women to America’s treasure trove of popular music, from Alberta Hunter to Peggy Lee.  She brings that message home in her touring multi-media stage show, and wherever she plays jazz clubs and festivals.  “It’s a swinging honors course in womankind!” raves San Francisco Magazine’s Bruce Kelley.

Born in Los Angeles, Rose was drawn to music at a young age. She grew up a block from the Troubadour, the West Hollywood nightclub that became a Mecca for the Southland’s emerging singer-songwriter scene in the early 1970s. Singing professionally in touring R&B band (Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra) and for a lucrative radio and TV jingle market kept her busy for some years.  But Rose had a hankering to return to the jazz and blues roots she’s always loved.  A longtime mainstay on the San Francisco music scene, , Rose has also appeared at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, the Hot Jazz Meeting at Tonhalle Concert Hall in Dusseldorf, the legendary Bulls Head Pub in London,  and has been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
Ms. Rose's touring schedule, recordings and press can be found at www.pamelarose.com and at www.wildwomenofsong.com

Barry Jekowsky

Considered one of America’s most innovative conductors, California Symphony Music Director and founder Barry Jekowsky has long been at the forefront of redefining the classical experience for a 21st-century audience. Influenced by his close association with such legendary composers as Leonard Bernstein and Jacob Druckman, Jekowsky became the first to include at least one American composition on every program he conducts—a tradition now in its 23rd year, for which he received the ASCAP Award for “Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music” in 2002.

To help ensure that there will be a next generation of outstanding composers, Jekowsky founded the California Symphony’s Young American Composer-in-Residence Program (YACR) in 1991 to nurture extraordinarily gifted new voices. The first and only program of its kind in the United States, YACR consists of three-year residencies in which participating composers are given unparalleled access to the orchestra as a laboratory to hone their craft. Notably, YACRs have gone onto win two of the three BBC International Masterprizes to date in the world’s leading competition. In a special citation to Jekowsky and the California Symphony, BMI Foundation President Ralph Jackson noted: “We know of no other orchestra anywhere in the world doing this type of groundbreaking work with young composers.”

In 2005, Reader’s Digest named his California Symphony as “America’s Best Symphony Orchestra.” USA Today has called Jekowsky “a name to watch.” San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman has noted that “under music director Barry Jekowsky, the California Symphony now ranks among the Bay Area’s most reliable musical organizations, treating its subscribers time and again to well-planned and brilliantly executed programs.” San Francisco Examiner critic Allan Ulrich observed: “Time was (and not so long ago) when regional orchestras desperate for acceptance in the community aimed so low you could trip over the programming in a sunlit room. Not so at the California Symphony, where founding music director Barry Jekowsky is winding up the orchestra’s season with such intelligent repertoire and committed music-making that other organizations of similar size should be required to take note.” And San Jose Mercury News critic Paul Hertelendy announced: “The California Symphony has emerged as a significant force in the Northern California music world.”

Long before it became a trend, Jekowsky began presenting gifted young musicians in their professional concert debuts in the United States. Among those who have gone onto to international acclaim have been violinists Sarah Chang, Kyoko Takezawa, Leila Josefowicz, and Hilary Hahn; pianists Helen Huang and Joyce Yang; and cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

In 1997, Jekowsky led the California Symphony to critical acclaim with the recording of its first CD—Lou Harrison: A Portrait, featuring Al Jarreau (DECCA/ARGO)—which garnered rave national and international reviews and was named “CD of the Month” in Gramophone magazine. The Los Angeles Times called it “a 40-minute beauty, deeply moving, but also deeply joyful…” The Atlantic Monthly rated it “superb.” Among others, Billboard called it a “diverse, highly accessible album” and wrote: “Let’s hope there’s more coming from conductor Barry Jekowsky, an ideal interpreter of Harrison’s beautiful music.”

In 1986, the year before he founded the California Symphony, Jekowsky won a prestigious Stowkowski Conducting Competition and made his European conducting debut with the London Philharmonic. He has since appeared as guest conductor with many ensembles throughout North America and Europe, including at the Tanglewood, Britt, and Aspen Music Festivals, the London Philharmonic, the City of London Sinfonia, Manchester’s (UK) Halle Orchestra, and the Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville, Jacksonville, Oregon, Richmond (VA), Pacific, Maryland, Delaware, Akron, Kalamazoo, and Oklahoma Symphonies.

In the mid-1990s, he simultaneously served as Music Director of the California Symphony and Associate Conductor of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. Despite twice-monthly cross-country commutes for four years, Jekowsky led the National Symphony to critical acclaim during four national tours, concerts at the Kennedy Center, young people’s concerts, family concerts, and summer programs at Wolf Trap. Jekowsky was also featured with the NSO on CBS Sunday Morning and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Beginning in 1998, Jekowsky spent a decade at the musical helm of the Reno Philharmonic. On the verge of bankruptcy when he arrived, the ailing orchestra soon flourished under Jekowsky’s innovative programming. Almost immediately, the Philharmonic began selling out concerts, allowing it to double its budget and performance schedule while ending each year with a cash surplus.

The former principal timpanist for the San Francisco Symphony for 17 years, Jekowsky earned both his undergraduate and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, which he entered at the age of nine.

Barry Jekowsky lives with his wife, Rosalind, and their three children in the San Francisco area.