Divi Zheni - Bios

Tatiana Sarbinska - Artistic Director
Tatiana Sarbinska is one of the world's leading experts on the performance of Balkan folk music. As one of the preeminent soloists of her generation, she toured and recorded extensively with the internationally acclaimed Pirin Ensemble. A gifted teacher, she has directed ensembles, music events, and workshops in the USA since 1991. She currently directs three ensembles in Boston and Washington DC — Divi Zheni, Zornitsa, and Orfeia, and has been awarded National Treasure status by the Bulgarian government, for her musical legacy, and for preserving the musical heritage of her home country. In 2004 Tatiana was the recipient of the Wammy (Washington Area Music Award) for World Music Vocalist.

Vera Anastasoaie - Voice
Vera was introduced to Divi Zheni and Bulgarian folk music about five years ago after singing with Tatiana at the Sveta Petka Bulgarian Church for a year. Since then she has traveled to Eastern Europe numerous times and has come to love the rich culture and music of these unique countries.

Bonnie Armstrong - Voice, tambura

Bonnie mispent significant portions of her youth in theater, including a Summer Stock musical theater production of The Boyfriend; a Molière play; as well as off-off-Broadway work. She still has her Actors Equity card! Lately she has participated in Scottish and English country dancing in such likely and unlikely places as: Egypt, floating down the Nile; a Ball at Blair Castle in Scotland; in English manors and country houses; and throughout the Greek Isles on a two-masted schooner. It was a fateful visit to her son in college, who'd found a pretty girl who did Balkan dancing, which ultimately led Bonnie to Divi Zheni!

Freedom Baird - Voice, tambourine
Freedom Baird's musical experiences include: Christmas gigging with her junior high school choir at the New York Hilton; drumming and singing backup vocals in Nina Mankin's post-collegiate folk-pop-rock band The Bang Up Toys at the Knitting Factory and other NYC venues; dancing and drumming in New York and Senegal with Djoniba Mouflet's West African dance company; co-creating the MIT Media Lab's internationally touring electro-punk outfit LSA; joining the cast of Cambridge's Balkan Christmas Revels; and singing with her kids at bedtime. She thanks her wonderful voice teachers of then and now — Ms. Dixon & Mr. Pierman, Jeannie Deva, and Tatiana Sarbinska. She is honored to sing with Divi Zheni and to help bring this astounding music to a wider audience.

Abigail Bordeaux - Voice

Abigail grew up playing the flute and singing in her church's youth choir. She was introduced to Balkan music by Kim Fedchak while studying Russian language and linguistics at Bryn Mawr College in the 1990s. From 1994 to 1999, she sang with the Bryn Mawr-based group Slaveja, of which she was a founding member. She has attended several Eastern European Folklife Center workshops, where she had the opportunity to learn Bulgarian vocal technique from Tzvetanka Varimezova and Donka Koleva and to try her hand at beginning kaval with Valeri Georgiev. When not singing, Abigail enjoys travel, pilates, reading non-fiction, renovating her 110-year-old condo, and spending time with her husband, Bryan. She is a librarian at Harvard University.

Suzanne Costanza - Voice, flute
Suzanne Costanza has been a member of Divi Zheni since its first year. She sings soprano and plays flute, attempting to mimic kaval. Suzanne also is a member with her husband of the International Music Club, a Boston-based band that plays for international folk dancing, in which she also sings, and plays flute, soprano recorder, occasionally hurdy gurdy, and even more occasionally, silly noise toys, the most important of which is a genuine duck call. Suzanne's other major interests are gardening (always liked digging holes and watching worms) and botany, especially with very old, very dead plants ("...all dead, long gone, except for DNA remembrance....").

Jane Culbert - Voice

Jane's first experience with Balkan singing was in Christmas Revels with Dmitri Pokrovsky in 1990, and she has subsequently continued her learning through classes and lessons with Susan Robbins, Artistic Director of Libana. Her most recent Balkan singing experience in Christmas Revels 2007 convinced her that she wanted to explore this music more fully, and she is excited to be a member of the Divi Zheni and to have the privilege of working with Tatiana. When not learning words and music, Jane Culbert is a consultant to nonprofit organizations, primarily in the cultural sector.

Naomi Edelman - Voice

Naomi Edelman’s life passion is singing! She has her BS in Music Performance (classical voice) from SUNY New Paltz, where she studied with Kent Smith. Before that she studied with Mimi O’Neill of Allegro Studios. Naomi has also dabbled in jazz, folk, show tunes and more but her favorite music is world music, which brought her to Divi Zheni. Naomi has taught private voice lessons, and currently provides private music therapy sessions in the area. Naomi recently moved Boston, and is studying music therapy and mental health counseling in Lesley University’s Graduate Expressive Therapies Program. She loves to work with children, especially those with special needs. She is currently interning at the Perkins School for the Blind Secondary School with multiply disabled adolescents, as well as leading a MT group in the infant toddler room! When she is not singing..well..that is a rare moment…Naomi enjoys dancing, hiking, biking, yoga, cooking and reading. Naomi hopes to continue learning about Bulgarian song, language and culture in her journey with Divi Zheni, and to one day go to the country itself.

Barbara Gottfried - Voice
Barbara Gottfried is a professor in the Women’s Studies Program at Boston University, and teaches courses in women in literature, mass media, and film. She has traveled extensively in the Balkans, including trips to Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. She has studied Balkan dance and singing at seminars in Ohrid, Macedonia with Goran Alacki and Ljupco Manevski [Tanec] and Bansko, Bulgaria with Tatiana Sarbinska, and the dance of Transylvania at a dance camp in Felsosofalva in the Transylvanian part of Romania [Szekelyfold]. She has been folk dancing since a fateful night in 1971, when she stumbled upon Israeli dancing in the MIT Student Center, and is currently a programmer for the Tuesday Night Revival, monthly advanced Balkan dancing in Arlington, MA.

Hilary Harpe Lilja - Voice

When Hilary Harpe Lilja joined Divi Zheni in December of 2009, her only significant musical accomplishment was winning first place in the annual Ha Tinh Province Department of Education Singing and Dancing Competition during her time as a VSO volunteer teacher-trainer there. The good people of Ha Tinh province, Vietnam, most likely chose her for this honor (above dozens of clearly more qualified singers) because she was the only foreigner in the province at the time, fluent enough in Vietnamese to sing one verse of a children's song about a duck, and willing to do so in front of a crowd of 800. She was drawn to Divi Zheni after her honeymoon in Bulgaria introduced her to the amazing folk music. She's delighted to be part of such a talented and interesting group of women and hopes her musical accomplishments will grow.

Priscilla Howell - Voice
Priscilla has studied voice and the Art of Group Singing with Susan Robbins, Artistic Director of Libana. She has also studied Middle Eastern singing and dance, with special focus on Algerian Berber singing and dance with Amel Tafsout. She has performed sacred and secular songs with Northern Harmony, and has participated in an English Folk/Gypsy Song workshop with Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson at Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp. Some of her other loves: Cajun waltz and two-step, cooking, her two musical and wonderous children, her drummer-boy husband and singing and singing and singing.

Kate Jellinghaus - Voice, kaval
Kate discovered Bulgarian folk music in 1994, when living in Bulgaria and teaching through the Soros Foundation. She was blessed to meet amazing teachers — she began singing folk songs and playing the kavalin Sliven with dyado Stoyan Chobanov, former director of the Folk Music School in Kotel. Together with him, she organized a student folk group at the Sliven Language School (the first one!). She then moved to Sofia to study painting and meanwhile studied music with bai Nikola Ganchev, the virtuoso kaval player, who became a dear friend. In 2004 she helped initiate the founding of the Fund for Traditional Performance Artistry in Bulgaria, a group working to promote and preserve the traditional arts.

Gabrielle Keller - Voice

Gabrielle Keller studied piano with Jeanette Giguere and Reginald Hachey at the New England Conservatory, and with Peter Cassino at Longy in Cambridge. She received her MA from Lesley College, her BFA from Boston University and is currently a Professor at Montserrat College of Art in the Photo/Video Department. Her photographs are included in The Museum of Art at RISD, The Fogg Art Museum, The Danfoth Museum of Art and many corporate and private collections. She received the St Botolph Grant, the Ultimate Eye Foundation Grant and honorable mentions in the International Color Awards, the Prix de la Photographie Paris, and the International Photography Awards. Her different bodies of work span a broad selection of subject matter - but always involve building tightly structured narratives that create meaning using both the content and the craft of the photograph. Her love of music spans many different genres from the Tallis Scholars to Stevie Ray Vaughan and remains an essential part of her life and work. URL: gabriellekeller.com

Kim Keown - Voice
Kim Keown has been singing her whole life. As a child her grandparents used to make her get up on stage in bars and sing jazz standards with pianists they knew and loved. She also plays the flute. After college, where she minored in theater, she studied filmmaking at the Massachusetts College of Art and started her career in multimedia installation and performance. She now runs a small multimedia community circus called Circus Mirage. She was introduced to full voice singing by her voice teacher Sue Robbins, founder and artistic director of Libana. She is currently taking classes at Berklee School of Music. She loves singing Balkan music with Divi Zheni and, as a new member, learning more about voice with Tatiana.

Liz Levin - Voice
I have been participating in international dance since 1976 and had never sung at all when Tatiana started Divi Zheni in 2000. Singing and performing with Divi Zheni has deepened my love of Balkan rhythms and song as well as my love of traveling to Bulgaria. I am deeply grateful to Tatiana for insisting that, yes, I really can sing!

Jenée E. Morgan - Voice

Jenée E. Morgan grew up in Nunda, NY, and hails from a musical family. Reading music before English, she started singing at a very early age, playing piano at age 4, violin at 6, and saxophone at 8. While attending SUNY Geneseo, Jenée became interested in ethnomusicology and joined the Geneseo String Band. She also played small ensemble gigs for local square and barn dances, and for special events with ethnomusicologist-folklorist-professor Jim Kimball. Around then, Jenée was first introduced to Bulgarian folk music and women’s choral singing. From 2003 to 2005, Jenée sang with Sladki Doumi, a Bulgarian women’s chorus in Rochester, NY, directed by Sandy Cherin. After moving to Boston in 2007, Jenée found out about Divi Zheni from choruster Julia Poirier, and joined the chorus herself in 2009. Jenée is a music/catalog librarian at Berklee College of Music’s Stan Getz Library. She holds a BA in Ethnomusicology, and an MLS and MA in Musicology. Besides singing in Divi Zheni, she recently began playing violin in the Cambridge-based Americana-folk-rock band Kingsley Flood.

Cathie O'Neill - Voice

Cathie discovered folk dancing and international folk music in 1980, where she met her husband, Brad, married in Denmark in 1984, and lived for four years in Germany. After raising two children, Cathie became a volunteer for the Folk Arts Center of New England. In 2006, she joined the International Music Club led by Ray Rosenstock and Barbara Pixton. In the winter of 2007, Cathie had the opportunity to take a singing lesson with Tatiana Sarbinska and fell in love with Bulgarian music. She was thrilled when invited to join Divi Zheni. Being a member of the group for the past 3 years has given Cathie the opportunity to study with Tatiana, sing beautiful Bulgarian music and enjoy the company and friendship of a talented group of women. When not dancing and singing, Cathie is an assistant teacher, working with special needs students in Grades 6,7 and 8.

Margo Pearce - Voice

As a gradeschooler, Margo was a "bluebird" in the school choir, belted out hymns with her Nanna in church, and sang in her high school production of Brigadoon. She is now an acupuncturist and registered nurse, and works with homeless people in Boston. She also has a nine-year-old cattle dog who takes her for regular walks. Margo imagines herself and her DZ sisters sending forth—with voice—from a mountaintop to heal the land. And all this under the Fearless One's lead—that being Tatiana, of course!

Julia Poirier - Voice, guitar, tambura, spoons
Fours years after joining Divi Zheni in April 2002, Julia bailed out of her longtime job as a database administrator and enrolled in graduate school for ethnomusicology. For her Master's thesis she collected and analyzed traditional songs from the Bulgarian village of Grashevo. She's still not sure what she's going to be when (if) she grows up, but she sure had a good time in grad school; meanwhile she is delighted to be singing Bulgarian songs with Divi Zheni. Julia is also a member of the Pinewoods Band, plays tenor viol with the Tufts Early Music Ensemble, performs as a ringer for various church and temple choirs, and directs an after-school singing club at the Columbus Elementary School in Medford. When she’s not making music, she cooks, putters in her unruly garden, herds her cats, and works on discovering her inner adult.

Paula Rosenstock - Voice, tupan, dumbek
In my teens I sang Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, etc. songs, guitar in hand, in the privacy of my room. When I first discovered international folk dancing in 1971 at UMass Amherst, I fell in love with the music of Eastern Europe, especially Bulgaria. One of my first choral experiences was in the Freiburger Bachchor, as an exchange student in Freiburg, Germany. Years later, I rediscovered my love of choral singing while performing early music with Maestro Ray Rosenstock directing the Keene State College Collegium. I have since then sung with classical choirs and folk music groups, including the Folk Arts Center's International Music Club. My dad, a professional classical percussionist, taught me my first beat pattern, the one in Ravel's "Bolero"; and I have been tapping my fingers incessantly ever since. He would be so amazed that I am now the percussionist for Divi Zheni! I will be forever grateful to Tatiana Sarbinska for helping me find my voice and am proud to be a founding member of Divi Zheni.

Leilani Roser - Voice

Born to a guitar hobbyist and a self-taught singer-pianist, Leilani grew up studying keyboard, violin, vocals, and air guitar. A Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares album was the first music that moved her to tears. Finding a folk chorus led by a local, authentic Bulgarian director was a stroke of sheer luck, and she can now be found crying regularly at weekly Divi Zheni rehearsals. Leilani has also performed with the UC Davis Gospel Choir, MIT Polynesian Dance, and is currently melting faces as the lead singer of Somerville hard rock band, The Battleships.

Dori Smith - Voice, tambourine
Dori Smith has been in Divi Zheni since 2000. As a self-confessed Slavophile (with a background in Russian language and culture), she loves the Bulgarian sound. She has always enjoyed harmonizing with any music, sang in college choir and a Russian chorus, and has played the piano.

Anna Stevens - Voice
What serendipity! Just as I realized it was time to pursue an early dream of learning Balkan singing, I found Divi Zheni! Thanks to Tatiana's dynamic teaching, the members' welcoming ways and the music's stunning harmonics, I am thrilled to be singing with the group! My roots: from age 3-12, I started each day singing with my whole school, and danced each spring for May Day, at The School in Rose Valley. Heaven! At 15, I travelled in the Balkans with a friend's family. Riding old steam locomotives from Zagreb to Athens, we stumbled across traditional folk singers & dancers at open air markets & dusty rural train stations...I was hooked! After that, it was all-you-can-find folk dancing, including a stint with the Korios international folk dance troupe. Settling in Gloucester and raising two kids with husband, Andy, I began choral singing 15 years ago. I've sung with Chorus North Shore, the La la la Singers, Boston Revels, the Mystic Chorale and, most recently, Sorellanza, a women's a cappella chorus directed by Patti Pike, which I helped found in 2005. Renewed folk dancing around Boston tops off my bountiful plate!

Debra Strick - Voice
I first heard Bulgarian singing on the radio in the 1960's and had no idea what it was. Like a search for the "lost chord" it took me years to track down the otherworldly sound. It wasn't until I met Tatiana Sarbinska at Balkan Music Night in Concord that I finally found an opportunity to fully participate in making this unique traditional sound. For me, the most intimate connection with music happens when I'm preparing with others for performance. So, in the 1970's I was a member of the Moadon Teatron in Tel Aviv and entertained the troops during the Yom Kippur War. During graduate school, I worked as a guitar teacher and performer in blues, folk, and bluegrass styles, including opening for blues legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. Later I studied with Anabel Graetz and performed with the Cambridge Slavic Chorus under Anne Warner. I love classical choral singing as well, with performance highlights including Verdi's Requiem at Philharmonic Hall with the Brooklyn Philharmonia, and Mahler's Third Symphony with the Philadelphia Symphony at Saratoga under maestro Charles Dutoit. And now it is my great honor and pleasure to learn from Tatiana and to sing with all the wonderful Divi Zhenis!

Julie Sussman - Voice
Julie Sussman sang in her high-school chorus and, decades later, in three women's groups in the Los Angeles area: the Caltech Women's Glee Club (including a concert with Peter Schickele), the Arroyo Singers, and Zhena (Balkan music!). Zhena whetted her appetite for Balkan singing, but there were no opportunities back home in Boston until Divi Zheni was formed; and what an opportunity — for a complete amateur to learn from a world-class performer and master teacher! A folk dancer since junior high school, Julie also dabbles at piano and harpsichord. In "real life" she has been a computer programmer and has written or edited computer-science textbooks and instructors' manuals. She is also the author of "I Can Read That! A Traveler's Introduction to Chinese Characters".

Ariel Weinberg - Voice, accordion

Ariel Weinberg joined Divi Zheni in spring 2009 after an inspiring
workshop with Tatiana. She also sings and plays with Skorosmrtnica, the
International Music Club, and the MIT Meridian Singers, and occasionally with various local shape note groups. By day, she cleans old computers with q-tips, carries around robots, manages metadata, and shows confused children how to use a slide rule; most nights you can find her at contra or international folk dances.

Elaine Winic - Voice, flute
Elaine joined Divi Zheni late in 2001 when her friends in the group told her about how much fun they were having, singing with Tatiana Sarbinska. She had been folk dancing for many years, and singing the songs of Bulgaria seemed to be a perfect next step. In other musical areas, she has played the flute with the Harvard Summer Pops Band for over 30 years! And she currently studies classical piano with Alys Terrien-Queen. Other non-musical pursuits include keeping the payroll running at work, and knitting into the wee hours at night.

Mari Young - Voice
Having sung in choirs all her life it was only a natural progression for Mari to merge her love of singing and her love of Bulgarian music into one with Divi Zheni. A member since day one, Mari has taken this singing bliss even further by singing in the alto section after a lifetime of being a soprano! (and is loving it!) Mari has even traveled to Bulgaria to visit this enchanting music in its natural environment. Mari is involved with International Folk dancing, folk music, NEFFA, the Croatian singing group Pajdashi, and her wonderful husband and 3 really fun children!