Music of the Jewish Diaspora: The Noga Band featuring Avram Pengas

New York music legend Avram Pengas is a virtuoso guitarist, bouzouki player, and singer whose music is rooted in the Mediterranean tavernas of Athens. Born into a musical family of Romaniote and Sephardic Jewish-Greek heritage, Pengas was raised in Jaffa, and a budding career as a performer in Greek clubs in Israel brought him to New York in 1970 to participate in the legendary scene of Turkish-owned clubs along 8th Avenue that were the pulse of Hell’s Kitchen from the 1920s to the 1970s. A popular performer in the local Greek and Sephardic/Mizrachi communities, Pengas and his Noga Band cook up a multicultural stew of rhythms and modes spanning Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Israel, and the Levant.

Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance for for this summer concert, which will be performed live in the Museum’s Edmond J. Safra Hall.

To attend the program in person (COVID vaccination required), register here.

To attend the program from home by watching the livestream, register here.

This program is sponsored in part through the Battery Park City Authority community partnership.

Public programming at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; a Humanities New York CARES Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal CARES Act; and other generous donors.