Turning Text into Song: A Poetic & Musical Masterclass

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Adam Sol, Alisha Kaplan, Deborah Leipziger and members of Jaffa Road.

In celebration of National Poetry Month and a poetry exchange between Toronto and Boston, Koffler Arts hosts a rare opportunity for the community to explore playing with ancient texts to create new works that move us.

Join poets Adam Sol, Alisha Kaplan, and Deborah Leipziger, and members of the JUNO Award-winning group Jaffa Road – Aaron Lightstone and Sundar Viswanathan – for a Masterclass on playing with traditional tools in inspiring ways.

The Poets

Adam Sol’s latest collection is Broken Dawn Blessings (ECW 2021), which won the Vine Award and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry. He has published four other books of poetry and one collection of essays, How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry. He is the Blake Goldring Professor at Victoria College, University of Toronto, where he is the Launch Director for the Centre for Creativity.

Alisha Kaplan is a poet, educator, and narrative medicine practitioner. Using the arts, she works with health professionals and patients to reinvigorate medicine with care and humanity. She teaches Health Humanities at the University of Toronto and is a creative writing workshop facilitator with the Writers Collective of Canada. Her debut poetry collection, Qorbanot, a collaboration with artist Tobi Kahn, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award from the League of Canadian Poets. Alisha splits her time between Toronto and Bela Farm, where she grows garlic, harvests honey, and hosts barn dances.

Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and advisor on sustainability. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on sustainability and human rights. Her collection of poems, Story & Bone, was published in 2023 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems. She is part of the 2025-2026 cohort of Jews of the Americas Fellows, selected by Brandeis University.

Deborah is the co-founder of the New England Jewish Poetry Festival, now in its 16th year. She was a 2023-2024 Creative Community Fellow, selected by the Jewish Arts Collaborative. Deborah has served as the Poet-in-Residence at the Vilna Shul, a cultural center in Boston. Hadassah magazine selected Story & Bone for its Shabbat Bookshelf in honor of National Poetry Month 2024. She has had residencies at T S Eliot House in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The Musicians

Aaron Lightstone is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, bandleader, music therapist, and educator. He is best known as the founder of Jaffa Road which has been recognized with accolades including 2 JUNO nominations, a Canadian Folk Music Award, and Recording Artist of the Year at the Folk Music Ontario Awards. Aaron is composer and producer of a collection of six intercultural relaxation CDs (for medical settings) made for the Room 217 Foundation, with bandmate Justin Gray. This music collection won the innovation of the Year Award at the 2022 McGill International Palliative Care Conference.

Aaron studied Classical guitar with Terry McKenna and improvisation with Dr: Colin Lee at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he earned a master's degree in 2004. He occasionally teaches music therapy courses. Aaron’s long-standing interest in the music of many different cultures led him to study Sephardic and Arabic music and oud performance practice and repertoire with master musicians including Hazzan Aaron Bensousan, Dr. George Sawa, Dr. A.J. Racy, and Simon Shaheen.

In the late 1990s, Aaron was commissioned by the St. Lucia School of Music in Castries to conduct in depth research on St. Lucia’s indigenous folk music traditions. In the early 2000s, he studied sitar and classical Indian music with Anwar Khurshid. In 2004, he wrote a groundbreaking Master's thesis on the use of improvised Hip-Hop and the therapeutic impacts of using Hip-Hop aesthetics and production in music therapy sessions. His research has since been published in the first academic music therapy textbook to deal with Rap and Hip-Hop. Aaron's interest in and commitment to the revitalization, renewal, and reimagining of 21st century Jewish art & culture continues to inspire and guide Jaffa Road.

Sundar Viswanathan is a JUNO award-winning jazz and world music artist, and one of Canada's most diversely talented artists. In addition to his long-standing role as a wind player and vocalist in Jaffa Road, Sundar is a highly respected international musical ambassador and educator. He is equally comfortable within jazz and world music as a saxophonist, flutist, bansurist, composer, and vocalist. Sundar’s work on standard compositions and original material has been heard on stages in Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. He can be heard on over 20 recordings as leader or sideman, including his ensemble, Avataar Collective (2022 JUNO award for Jazz Group of the Year), and his lnduswest Project.

Sundar developed his unique musical personality over several years, performing and/or recording with jazz and world music greats including Wynton Marsalis, Dave Douglas, Rez Abbasi, Charles Tolliver; Frank Foster; Andrew Hill, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, Kiran Ahluwalia, Billy Hart, GURU, Yair Dalal, Kenny Werner, Don Thompson, Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler, Vijay Iyer, Marcus Roberts, Chris Potter, John Hicks, Marcus Belgrave, Jim McNeely, Ensemble Uniqua and many others.

Sundar's teachers/mentors have included Joe Lovano, George Garzone, Cecil McBee, John McNeil, Phil Woods, Janet Lawson, Frank Foster, Barry Harris, David Baker, Pat LaBarbera and others. He lived and gigged in New York for several years as he completed a PhD at New York University in jazz, classical and world music performance and composition. Sundar is an Associate Professor of Jazz performance at York University, where he has been a full-time faculty member for over twenty years.