Jews Brothers Band Bios

Hershal , the band's music director and accordionist, was raised in a Yiddishkeit environment in a musical family which included a klezmer grandfather who emigrated to New York from the Ukraine with a violin as his only posession and a great-grand father who was a cantor in Roumania. As a teenager Hershal studied reed instruments with Maxie Epstein of the Epstein Brothers Band, His early career was in the Afro-Cuban music field in New York where he achieved recognition and several awards as a music arranger and producer of Latin records. He then went on to play jazz for many years and with the formation off the Jews Brothers Band achieved a long-held ambition to go back to his roots.

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 US. In New Zealand he was the founder of the legendary Gitbox Rebellion and is a highly respecfed solo guitarist with two albums of original compositions to his credit.. He was for many years Auntie Clockwise in the Aunties children's music theatre group.

Neill Duncan , saxophonist / percussionist with the band, plays several instruments with great fluency, including zydeco metal washboard, and was one of the founding members of the acclaimed Six Volts and of The Primitive Art Group in Wellington He is also well known as a composer for theatre, dance, television and film, both in New Zealand and Australia, has recorded his own solo album and is a member of the popular New Orleans combo The Blue Bottom Stompers. Neill is of Highland Scots background.

Linn Lorkin is a singer - songwriter - chanteuse with three albums of original songs released in New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan. She has also released two successful French chansons albums with the trio French Toast (Linn, Hershal and Peter in a moonlighting mood!) and is well known for her interpretations of European songs in other languages. Her keyboard abilities (she was once featured with her own trio at Ronnie Scotts jazz club in London and played New York piano-bars for several years) are used to advantage in the band with her nifty melodica playing. For six years she was a member of the seminal Inside Out Theatre company and her dramatic singing style has become part of the Jews Brothers appeal. Her heritage is English and Scottish with a dollop of Irish.

Peter Scott, double bass player, is a Jewish South Londoner and was involved in the UK alternative music scene performing with Dr. John, Madness and Dollar (with Ron Kavana) and in many UK bands with the likes of Loll Coxhill and Stan Tracey before emigrating to New Zealand in 1990. He is also a founding member of the double-platinum selling New Zealand group Bluespeak.