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Beth Silver (M.Mus) is thrilled to be part of a community in which she can thrive on her intuition and creativity. As an involved freelancer based in Toronto, she is admired for expressive, compelling playing and her abilities to paint in many colours through her instrument. She excels at capturing character and spontaneity in music - especially amidst interactive chamber settings. A versatile musician and lover of many genres, Beth is equally at home in a traditional classical ensemble as she is in a band arranging, improvising, and exploring new voices for cello.
Performances with various chamber projects have brought her to manifold festivals around the world, including Salzburg's Kammermusik Festival, Ottawa Chamber Festival, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Toronto Jazz Fest, Glatt und Verkehrt Festival in Austria, Glasgow's Celtic Connections Festival, Festival Napa Valley, Okanagan Indigenous Music and Arts Festival, Constellation Festival, VELD, Tirgan Festival, Biglake Arts, Honens, Stratford Summer Music, Scotia Festival, Ashkenaz Fest and KlezKanada. She has been presented across Canada by Jeunesses Musicales, Prairie Debut, and Debut Atlantic as part of the Ladom Ensemble, which she joined in 2018. Her longtime duo with pianist Jenna Richards has been performing for diverse audiences in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes since 2013. Beth is also the newest member of Eastern European polyphonic singing band BLISK.
A number of stage and recording projects have called upon her to arrange string parts, and she appears on records ranging from singer-songwriter to prog rock, folk to funk, classical to jazz, R & B to Flamenco, some of which have received nominations from the Juno Awards, Canadian Folk Music Awards and Bubbe Music Awards. Her studio work also includes soundtracks for movies, television, commercials and video games, and she has worked with playwrights, directors and sound designers to write, program and record music for theatre.
Through playing with Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory, Beth has since developed a role in the global klezmer community, finding a unique voice for cello in the genre and representing Canada on the world stage. She has shared stages with the world's leading klezmorim, performing in New York, Europe, and of course on a few remotely recorded pandemic projects. Her ongoing research in Jewish and Eastern European music has time and again brought her to Romania, where she spent months working with traditional fiddle players all across Transylvania. These residencies also gave way to collaborations with Cluj-Napoca's Jewish History Museum to uncover and resurrect Maramureșean Jewish musical archives.
She is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council and her awards include a Canadian Folk Music Award for her arranging and playing, as well as the Ben Steinberg Musical Legacy Award recognizing musical achievement in the Canadian Jewish community.
Beth enjoys spending non-musical time painting, reading, thrifting, tending plants and doing yoga, and lives in Toronto's west end with her cat Sica.
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