Ira Temple is a multi-instrumentalist, music director, and embedded cultural organizer living in Brooklyn, NY.
Ira plays on and off Broadway, Recent credits include playing in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway, Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, and music directing Indecent at the Weston Playhouse.
Ira is also an active simcha band leader, playing in and leading bands for every occasion.
Ira was a founder of the radical-traditional Yiddish music group Tsibele and works as the music director for Laura Elkeslassy’s Jewish Moroccan concert project Divas in Exile
Press
“In a new album, Yiddish becomes a language of queer belonging”
Brooklyn-based musician Ira Khonen Temple blends Yiddish, klezmer and trans experience — and is resonating with a new generation of queer Jews.
“Through both the musicality and the language, Ira’s delivery of original, Yiddish, and tradapted lyrics feels like standing at the edge of a word and looking across the gap to another word.”
“When people discover music, they tap into something that is really deep and important to them. So this is an incredibly lush and effective place to do cultural work.”