About Zoë:
In a 150 year-old synagogue in Satu Mare, Romania, Zoë Aqua felt an inexplicable at-home-ness. The vaulted ceilings were painted with stars and every note pouring from her violin was bathed in heavenly reverb. An enthusiastic audience came out to hear her play compositions inspired by the lost music of the Jewish people that populated the city before WWII, assimilation and emigration broke the chain of cultural transmission. From 2021-2023, Aqua lived in Romania doing ethnographic research on a Fulbright grant to study Transylvanian folk music. Her performances in two venerable synagogues appear on her forthcoming live album, In a Sea of Stars, due out in Summer 2025. It’s a collaboration with three musicians from the folk revival scene in Cluj.
The Transylvanian fiddle sounds like the countryside looks — wild, raw and earthy. Every region has its own hyper-local style. In Mezőség, for instance, the powerhouse string bands emit a tidal wave of sound with hardcore melodies underpinned by purely major chords. In Szék, Aqua learned to play the brácsa (a flat-bridged viola) from a shepherd with 780 sheep, 5 goats and 4 dogs, which he used to scare away bears and ward off local thieves. In Maramureș, a rural region in the northern mountains, Aqua travelled the rutted roads full of horse carts and tractors to meet homesteading musicians whose minor modes and slow slides had traces of the kind of Jewish music prevalent there before the war.
In a Sea of Stars sees Aqua looking at klezmer music through a Transylvanian lens. For instance, “Suita Românească” begins with “Goldenshteyn învârtită,” a seldom-played melody that Aqua infuses with an irregular rhythm called învârtită. The rhythm comes from a Transylvanian couple dance originated from Romanian dancers, but became a key part of Hungarian dance sets as well. It's an example of different ethnic communities living side by side for centuries. The rhythm is hypnotic and the dance style smooth and gliding. The suite continues with “Bapolyer hârțag,” a well-known klezmer tune recast in a rhythm called hârțag. “Hârțag is a dance rhythm I associate with one of my mentors in Transylvania, the fiddler Ioan Hârleț ‘Nucu’,” explains Aqua. “When I think of him, I think of the rolling hills near his house on the edge of the town… an open field, people walking by with horses and carts, dogs running after every car.” Aqua is like a musical apothecary, collecting songs in the wild and then steeping, distilling and tincturing each one into a potent medicine.
Aqua was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. She played Suzuki violin while her dad led songs at their local synagogue and played klezmer music on the weekends. After college, Aqua lived in Brooklyn for a decade amidst a generous and progressive Jewish community that stoked her love of old klezmer recordings and her fascination with Eastern European music. She co-founded two klezmer bands, Tsibele and Farnakht, and was the full-time understudy for the Klezmatics’ Lisa Gutkin in the Broadway production of “Indecent.” Long passionate about teaching, Zoë holds two degrees in music education. She has performed at Philadelphia Folk Festival, Klezkanada Festival, Yiddish New York Festival and has toured in Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey.
