Biography
Throughout much of his career, Mark Olf ranked among America’s foremost interpreters and writers of Yiddish and Hebrew songs. Having entered the world in Russia before the revolution, he reached the United States as a child and took up residence on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. While serving as an instructor at the Henry Street Settlement, he found that audiences responded strongly to his work on violin and guitar as well as his voice, above all when he presented Jewish folk material in Yiddish and Hebrew. Later academic posts brought him to Queens College of the City University of New York and to the University of Rhode Island. He also issued four Folkways albums—three in Yiddish and one in Hebrew—each constructed around longstanding traditional songs.
Albums
