Eight years after making his professional operatic debut in a Philip Glass world premiere, Anthony Russell is now a vocalist, composer and arranger specializing in Yiddish art and folk song, chazones and Chasidic nigunim. Inspired by the phenomena of diaspora culture, his work in traditional Ashkenazi musical forms has led to an exploration of his own roots through the research, arrangement and performance of a hundred years of African American traditional music. The result of this work is his ongoing project with klezmer consort Veretski Pass, Convergence (2014 New Jewish Culture Network Music Commission Finalist), combining Ashkenazi and African American traditional musical forms to create singular narratives. The first recording phase of this project is set to be released in 2017. Anthony's work in Jewish music has brought him to stages in Toronto, Montreal, Berkeley, Boston, Miami, New York and Tel Aviv, the JCC in Manhattan and San Francisco, Symphony Space and, recently, to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He lives in Oakland, CA with his husband, Rabbi Michael Rothbaum.