Zach Mayer, now 21, has sung and played saxophone in music festivals ranging from the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto (http://www.ashkenazfestival.com/), to the KlezKanada Music Festival (http://klezkanada.org/), where he has been instructing and arranging an ensemble of 26 teenagers for 6 years. He has played in downtown NYC clubs such as The Bitter End, The Knitting Factory and Tonic, and leads and arranges for the Columbia Klezmer band. He was a 6-year cast member of the Off-Broadway production of Kids and Yiddish. He is currently the manager and baritone saxophonist for the Ayn Sof Arkestra, a 16-piece, neo-Klezmer avante garde professional big-band, featuring GRAMMY Award-winner Frank London of the Klezmatics and Carnegie Hall jazz-sax virtuoso, Greg Wall (whose album was one of the ten best CD’s of 2002, according to Jazz Times Magazine). Catch them the last Monday of every month at the Max D. Raiskin Center (325 East 6th St, NYC – http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/tag/ayn-sof-arkestra/). He attended the Rimon Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv, Israel, and is currently a sophomore in the BFA program at CCNY for Jazz performance. Since working at Wyclef Jean’s studio, Platinum Sound, he has played saxophone on tracks for Wyclef’s producers such as LOGiC (the producer of Wyclef’s “Sweetest Girl”), Gruve, and Keith Duplessis (AKA Lil’ Wonda). He currently studies privately with Bob Malach (who has performed with Stevie Wonder as well as the O’Jays), and has privately studied with six-time GRAMMY Award-winner Gary Smulyan, The Rolling Stones’ saxophonist Tim Reis, Bob Arthurs (dean of the Westchester Conservatory of Music), Hankus Netsky (founder of the internationally renowned Klezmer Conservatory Band), the Jazz Times-acclaimed Dave Pietro, and Dror Ben-Gur, of the Israel Philharmonic. You can often catch Zach with his buddy “Luscious” Luke eating fabulous $2 falafel at Cheeps on St. Mark’s Place.