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.

As a teenager, Hershal studied reed instruments with Max Epstein of the famed 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 pianist, musical arranger and record producer.

In New Zealand, he has been the founder of, and musical arranger for, two successful long-running music groups: The Nairobi Trio and French Toast as well as, of course, The Jews Brothers Band. With the formation of the JBB Hershal has achieved the long-held ambition of returning to his roots.