Twenty years ago, inspired by a klezmer tune playing on an Auckland café’s stereo, Hershal Herscher picked up his accordion and started playing the music his grandfather Harry had brought from the Ukraine to New York.
The rhythm he was pumping out acted like a magnet on three musician friends who were in the caf that day: fellow Americans Nigel Gavin (mandolin) and Kelvin Roy (trumpet), and Kiwi singer Linn Lorkin. Next thing you know, they were all jamming along. From that nucleus The Jews Brothers Band was born.
HERSHAL
Hershal, the band’s music director and accordionist, was raised in a Yiddishkeit environment in a musical family which included a klezmer grandfather who migrated to New York from the Ukraine with a violin as his only possession and a great-grandfather who was a cantor in Roumania. READ MORE
LINN LORKIN
Linn Lorkin, lead singer in the band, is a singer-songwriter with five albums of original songs to her credit. She is also well known in her native New Zealand for her interpretations of songs in other languages, particularly French chanson. READ MORE
NIGEL GAVIN
Nigel Gavin, mandolinist / guitarist / banjoist for the group and, like Hershal, a Jewish New Yorker, was a member of Robert Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists, with which he toured extensively throughout Europe and the USA. READ MORE
PETER SCOTT
Bass player from London with R'n'B, Jazz and Caribbean Fonk connections. Rhythm section player for Jon Clearey and the Savage Mooses, The Doormen, Dr ‘Desitively Bonnaroo’ John and Madness, not to mention The Muppets. Work in New Zealand highlighted as inspirational contributor to NZ Hip-Hop’s hippest namely ‘Homebrew’ and @Peace stop.
Neill Duncan
Neill Duncan, saxophonist/ percussionist with the band, was a founding member of legendary Wellington band The Six Volts and led Auckland’s popular swing combo The Blue Bottom Stompers. He has recorded a solo album of his own songs and has composed for theatre, dance, television and film, in both his native New Zealand and in Australia where he now lives. READ MORE