The acclaimed Ladino singer was born Yasmin Levy in Bakaa, Jerusalem, Israel, on 23 December 1975. A “very small, beautiful neighbour-hood”, Bakaa is filled with narrow alleys and warrens dating back many hundreds of years. The area is still a vital part of the history of this great city and, for Yasmin, her roots. Whenever she has time off, she loves to return to Jerusalem and spend time with her mother, brothers, sister and their families.

Yasmin’s musical interests began as a child. At six years of age, she was taught to play piano and she continued with her studies until age eighteen. At twenty, she began singing seriously but it wasn’t until a year later that she made her first public performance as a guest in a concert given by her mother. Other local concerts followed but it wasn’t until WOMEX 2002 that she made her international début and embarked on a singing career.

Her first album Romance And Yasmin (Adama Music/distributed by Harmonia Mundi) focused on Ladino music and Turkish influences and was greatly influenced by the work of her late father Yitzhak Levy. Born in Turkey in 1919, he worked as both a composer and cantor. After the creation of the State of Israel, Yitzhak was appointed head of the Ladino department at Israel's national radio station. His life's work was devoted to the collection and preservation of the songs of Sephardic Jews: these songs had been passed down orally from generation to generation over a period in excess of 500 years. During his lifetime he published four books containing Sephardic romances and another ten volumes of liturgical songs. He also recorded many of these same songs for the national radio. Sadly, Yitzhak Levy passed away when Yasmin was little over one year old. Nevertheless she grew up knowing her father's love for this music and his heritage as he had also taught her mother Kochava the Sephardic repertoire and she, in turn, passed the songs on to their daughter. When Yasmin was preparing her first disc Romance And Yasmin, she was she says “helped enormously by the books and recordings my father left behind”.

For her second album, the highly acclaimed La Juderia (Adama Music/distributed by Harmonia Mundi), Yasmin continued her work within the Ladino tradition but began to experiment more with the flamenco influences that date back to her residence in Spain during 2002. In that year, she was awarded a scholarship by the Christina Herren Foundation to study flamenco in Seville. There she was influenced strongly by the unique singing style that she then added to her own Sephardic one.

With her third album Mano Suave (World Village / Harmonia Mundi), released in October 2007, Yasmin embarked on a mature reinvestigation of her Ladino roots. Recorded in London's Livingston Studios in February 2007, it had Lucy Duran and Jerry Boys co-producing. Continuing Yasmin’s tradition of using the best musicians available, this album featured players from Iran, Armenia, Greece, Paraguay, Israel, Turkey and Spain. Mano Suave also featured a very moving duet with guest vocalist Natacha Atlas on the title track, which is a Beduin song in which Natacha’s Arabic interwove stunningly with Yasmin’s Spanish vocals.

Levy’s fourth album, Sentir, will be released in the U.S. on February 8, 2011 by Four Quarters Entertainment, following an acclaimed release in Europe in the fall of 2009. With it Yasmin finally honed a musical vision that integrates effortlessly all of her previous musical preoccupations with fresh, new directions. With Sentir, Yasmin’s music truly became ’of the world’, in the best sense of that phrase. Produced by the acclaimed Javier Limón (who has worked previously with the likes of Portuguese fado star Mariza), Sentir’s programme draws songs not only from Ladino (’Mi Korason’, ’Londje de Mi’) and flamenco (Javier Limón’s ’Nos Llego El Final’) traditions but also contemporary material (by Javier, Yasmin) and even Leonard Cohen (in a remarkable and fresh version of ’Hallelujah’).

As mentioned earlier, an important factor in Yasmin’s life and musical direction has been the legacy of her father Yitzhak Levy, who died when Yasmin was only one year old. Sentir’s ’Una Pastora’ allows Yasmin, by the miracle of modern technology, to duet with him. As she says ”This is one of the most beautiful songs my father ever recorded…His singing is something holy for me and I was afraid to touch it…until I realized that it was my own fears I needed to overcome.”

Yasmin’s deep, spiritual singing, passionate vocal delivery and striking good looks continue to entrance fans new and old. She has thrice been nominated for BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards and her appearance on BBC 2 TV’s Later…With Jools in November 2005 was one of the highlights of that particular series. More recently she has appeared on Holland’s acclaimed Vrije Geluiden television programme as well as featuring on television and radio in countries as diverse as Australia, Germany, Israel, Sweden, Spain, Austria, and on the popular Turkish television programme Ibo Show in July 2008. In January 2009 she was featured in France’s Concert FIP, a prestigious live radio series devoted to exposing the talents of artists from all over the World.

Yasmin’s touring activities have already taken her to many parts of the Globe. In 2009-2010 Yasmin’s Sentir tour has taken her to nineteen countries including Germany (twice), Holland (twice), Belgium, Israel (five times), Spain (twice), USA, Canada, France (four times including a sold out show at Paris’ renowned Alhambra Theatre), Greece (twice), Turkey (four times), UK (culminating in a sold out Cadogan Hall show), Sweden, Finland (twice), Switzerland, Portugal, Hungary (Sziget Festival), Korea, Austria, Poland.

In October 2008, Yasmin was nominated for Holland’s prestigious Edison Award, the Dutch equivalent of the Grammys, in the category Best World Music Album. This nomination confirms the very positive acceptance of her most recent release at both a critical and commercial level with the album having charted in the Top 30 of the main retail charts. Mano Suave also charted in the Top 10 of Sweden’s mainstream pop music charts and has performed extremely well across. Europe as well as in Australia and Israel.

In December 2008 Yasmin won the USA Songwriting Competition in the category Best Song (World) for her composition “Me Voy” (”I’m Leaving”).

Some months earlier, in September 2008, she was named Goodwill Ambassador for Children of Peace, a UK-based charity fighting to alleviate the plight of all children caught up in the decades-old Middle East crisis. As part of this role, Yasmin has committed to giving at least two workshops a year to Middle Eastern children from all sides of the conflict, talking about her career and trying to imbue these children with the hope that through music they may still live their dreams.

In March 2006, Yasmin was presented with the Anna Lindh Award for promoting cross-cultural dialogue, for her work with musicians covering three cultures and her connection with the history of Spain. The award reflects many of her hopes for the future. On a musical level, these have been distilled into the music and songs on her penultimate album Mano Suave and, perhaps even more so, on the brand new album Sentir. On a more global scale, Yasmin simply desires “that people will have more compassion towards each other and learn to live in harmony”.

Since the release of Sentir, Yasmin has been featured in a documentary film called Music Mon Amour which was produced for ARTE (Germany and France) and broadcast there on 5 September 2010 and subsequently shown in Poland on the 28 November 2010 as part of the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, Plus Camerimage 2010. Music Mon Amour follows the careers of Yasmin Levy, German composer Helmut Oehring and violinist Midori in an attempt to explore what it is in music that touches the public’s emotions so deeply and profoundly.

Yasmin toured the USA in October/November 2009 playing her first national USA tour. This tour was so successful that it is being followed by a second coast-to-coast American tour in February-March 2011, which will coincide with the USA release of Sentir on 4Q Entertainment. Yasmin’s tour will see her play sixteen shows in ten states including shows in locations from Tampa to Palm Beach (FL), Boston to Chicago, Cleveland to Mesa (AZ), and of course New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Yasmin recently completed a five city tour of Turkey including sold-out shows in Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara and was her fourth trip to the country for performances this year. During that time she has built up quite a considerable following and is regularly featured on major television shows as well as in all the major national newspapers. Yasmin also filmed a cameo appearance this year in a Greek/Israeli television film about the life of Rebetika singer Roza Eskanazy which is due to be broadcast in 2011. A major concert in Athens is also in the planning stages around the broadcast of this intriguing film.

In total, Yasmin has played more than eighty shows on her Sentir tour thus far to audiences in nineteen different countries. This tour continues through 2011 beginning with the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow (18 January 2011) and continuing to France, Corsica (to record an hour long French television concert to be broadcast later in the year), and Portugal before heading out on her next USA tour.

Upon her return, Yasmin will be playing shows in Greece and Corsica before, on 6 April 2011, headlining at London’s Barbican Hall for the first time. The Sentir tour will then take a well-earned break.

Yasmin has recently been in Paris recording one of her own songs as a duet with Enrico Macias and this collaboration will appear on his next album. Yasmin has also begun work on songs for her own next album which she hopes to begin recording later next year.

About Ladino:

For those new to the music and its language and history, Ladino is the collective term for the Judeo-Spanish languages spoken by the Jews of Spain: these languages infuse the original ancient Spanish with other languages including Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Slavic languages, Portuguese, French, Italian and Hebrew. The geographical spread of communities in North Africa, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans, each with distinct dialects and religious customs, is reflected in the musical variety of Judeo-Spanish folk songs carried down to the present day. UNESCO has recently recognised Ladino as one of the world’s endangered languages as they estimate there are fewer than 200,000 Ladino speakers world-wide.

Discography:

Romance And Yasmin (Adama Music)

La Juderia (Adama Music)

Mano Suave (Adama Music/4Q Entertainment Inc.)(FQT-CD-1817)

Sentir (Adama Music/4Q Entertainment Inc.)(FQT-CD-1821)

 

U.S. Press Contact: Blake Zidell, Blake Zidell & Associates – 718.643.9052 – blake@blakezidell.com

Worldwide Management: Paul Burger, SohoArtists – 011.44.20.7434.0008 – paul@sohoartists.co.uk

North American Representation: Thia Knowlton – 212.994.3505 – tknowlton@imgartists.com