Svetlana Kundish (UA/IL/D; voice)

Sveta Kundish was born in the Ukraine in 1982. She began studying music at age seven. In 1995 she settled in Israel with her family. She continued her music studies in the Ironi (Municipal) Arts High School in Tel Aviv, concentrating on voice and piano. After graduation she began intensive voice studies with Ella Akritova, an important singer who had been a professor in the Kiev Conservatory for many years before moving to Israel. In 2001, she began to study Yiddish music in the master class of Nehama Lifshitz. In 2003, she began to study musicology at Tel Aviv University, receiving her B.A. in 2007.  The same year, she was invited by Prof. Yuri Kokozey to study voice at the Prayner Konservatorium in Vienna, from which which she graduated in 2011. In 2008, Sveta won the 1st prize of the international vocal competition “The Golden Hanukkia” in Berlin. In 2012, she began studies at the Cantorial Department of the Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Berlin.

As a soloist, Sveta Kundish performs a wide variety of Jewish music throughout Europe. She also performs with Patrick Farrel, Alan Bern, Voices of Ashkenaz, the European World Music Ensemble and the Diwan der Kontinente Project, among other renowned ensembles.

In September 2013 she performed at the Festival of New Yiddish Song in New York, and in November 2013 she was invited to perform at the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize ceremony in Osnabrück.
In July 2015 she gave a concert in Paris at the Third Ladino Summer School by “Aki Estamos AALS”

Sveta is regularly an Artist-in-Residence and teacher at Yiddish Summer Weimar.
Since March 2017 Sveta is employed as a Cantor at the Jewish Comminuty of Brauschweig.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5mBva0VTlw

Photo: Ksenia Mushkat