KlezKanada was founded in 1996 to teach, nurture and present to a broad public the best of Jewish traditional arts and Yiddish/Jewish culture. Arising from the wellsprings of Jewish culture and expertise unique to Montreal and Canada, over the past decade KlezKanada has grown into an event with international resonance and cultural/artistic impact, drawing nearly 500 intergenerational participants from nearly every province of Canada, 25 U.S. states and 12 countries throughout the Americas, Eastern and Western Europe, as well as Israel. KlezKanada's program includes instrumental and vocal music, dance, drama, visual arts and folkcrafts, language, literature, film and other forms of expressive culture. Its goal is to foster Yiddish and Jewish cultural and artistic creativity as both an ethnic heritage and a constantly evolving contemporary culture and identity.
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KlezKanada's annual summer festival is held each year in the last week of August. The festival is located at Montreal's Camp B'nai Brith, about an hour and a half north of Montreal. Over 450 participants of all ages gather to participate in workshops, listen to world-class concerts and celebrate Yiddish/Jewish culture.
Year round programming includes a four-day winter-session in February (workshops, concerts, jamming and klezkabaret), a bi-annual concert, a workshop series for musicians taught members of the KlezKanada faculty, and a lecture series featuring eminent scholars in the fields of Yiddish studies and Ethnomusicology.
The KlezKanada faculty includes not only many of the pioneering figures of the Klezmer revival but legendary icons of Klezmer music and emerging artists on the Klezmer music scene as well.