Produced by GRAMMY winner Joanie Leeds and klezmer virtuoso Michael Winograd, Klezmerette arrives as a thriving underground scene of bands, festivals, and young audiences brings the music to a new generation

Listen to the album HERE

New York, NY | October 16, 2026 - There is a whole Klezmer music scene hiding in plain sight.

Across New York and beyond, musicians, dancers, festivals and increasingly younger audiences are treating the music not as a relic, but as a living form - loud, theatrical, romantic, virtuosic and built for a party.

Now screen actress Daniella Rabbani is stepping fully into it. After two decades of performing Yiddish music alongside a career that has included Ocean's 8, Scenes from a Marriage, The Better Sister and Furious, Rabbani releases her debut album, Klezmerette, today.

Produced by GRAMMY winner Joanie Leeds and acclaimed klezmer clarinetist, arranger and bandleader Michael Winograd, Klezmerette makes the case for why this music continues to attract new performers and audiences: it swings. It flirts. It gets weird. And it demands serious musicianship.

Across ten songs, the album moves through boisterous dance music, smoky cabaret, tango, folk balladry and theatrical pop all while maintaining its essential Yiddish kvetch. Winograd's arrangements treat the repertoire as flexible, living material, while Rabbani approaches each song with an actor's instinct for character, humor and drama.

"Der Nayer Sher (New Dance Tune)" is an invitation to the dance floor. "A Yiddishe Mama (A Jewish Mom)" pairs Yiddish and English with sensual horns and a late-night cabaret feel. "Ketzele Broygez (Lover's Tiff)" turns a lovers' quarrel into a spirited duet, while "Oyfn Pripitchek (At the Hearth)" strips one of the best-known songs in the Yiddish canon down to its emotional core.

Rabbani wants listeners to encounter the music before being told why they should care about it.

"It's like bagels with schmear. Undeniably good," she jokes.

That instinct reflects the world surrounding the record. Klezmer might not be well known to mainstream audiences today, but the scene itself never disappeared. Musicians, bands, festivals and dancers continue to build on the tradition, with younger artists and audiences joining a culture that is as social as it is musical.

For Rabbani, Klezmerette is less an act of preservation than participation.

She first fell in love with Yiddish as a young actor, eventually studying the language and spending the next twenty years performing the repertoire from New York's Town Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center to stages in Warsaw, Łódź, Bucharest and Vienna. What began as a connection to family history became an artistic language of her own.

The record also makes space for quieter territory. "Friling (Springtime)," written by poet and partisan Shmerke Kaczerginski in 1943, sits alongside flirtatious duets, dance tunes and cabaret numbers, giving the album the full emotional range Rabbani has always found in the repertoire.

Klezmerette ultimately returns to the joy of expression - the reason Rabbani kept singing this music for two decades before ever making a record.

The album follows singles "Oyfn Pripitchek" and "Ketzele Broygez," whose music video celebrates the diverse energy and visual language of New York City.

Last night, Rabbani marked the release with a concert, screening, and conversation at The Cutting Room in New York. Last month, she opened New York Sings Yiddish at Central Park SummerStage.

After twenty years, the debut has finally arrived.

Listen to and order Klezmerette HERE .

Klezmerette tracklist

1. Ketzele Broygez (Lover's Tiff)
2. Nor a Stral Fun Glick (Just a Strand of Luck)
3. Dona Dona (The Calf)
4. Friling (Springtime)
5. Ot Azoy Neyt a Shnayder
6. Oyfn Pripitchek (At the Hearth)
7. Papir iz Dokh Vays (Paper is White)
8. Shpil Gitar (Play Guitar)
9. Der Nayer Sher (New Dance Tune)
10. A Yiddishe Mama (A Jewish Mom)

11. Daniella Rabbani (photo credit: Ashley Romines)