There isn't much that could be called "average" about Guy Mendilow. Born to an Israeli music professor father with an interest in Brazilian jazz, Mendilow found himself moving from Israel to South Africa and finally to the U.S., where he joined the American Boychoir. Though he had grown up surrounded by music, Mendilow's first true performing experience was the choir. The performers toured 280 days a year, playing venues from small local churches to packed music halls. Mendilow says he's been a musician ever since. These global roots carry over to Mendilow's current project, the Guy Mendilow Band. The band plays what can truly be called world music, melding together the traditions of Brazil, the Middle East, Britain and countless other places. The band plays guitars and violins alongside the Brazilian berimbau-a one-stringed, bow-like instrument-and the Peruvian cajón-a box-shaped drum. The band will be bringing this multinational sensibility to Brandeis on May 1 as one of the acts of the upcoming Leonard Bernstein Festival for the Creative Arts. At the Festival, the band will perform songs from their latest work, The Ladino Project, a modernized take on the music of the Ladinos, Spanish Jews who fled Spain during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 and settled in North Africa and the Mediterranean, including Greece and the Balkans. The band's music is sung in the Ladino language, a mix of Hebrew, Spanish, Arabic and Greek that reflects how far-flung the Ladinos were after the migration from Spain.

However, the band isn't just rediscovering old folk music; the musicians are taking the songs and reimagining what they would become if the Ladinos had migrated even farther to Bahia in Brazil, Appalachia or other parts of the world. Even though the music isn't well known in the U.S., Mendilow spent much of his early life hearing it through the Sephardic communities in Israel, where the Ladino musical tradition still thrives. Though much of this music is a celebration of the Ladino culture, there's also a darker side to it. The band will debut a new piece at Brandeis, which was arranged for Holocaust Remembrance Day, and based on a Ladino poem from 1940.

Mendilow describes the piece as a "lament" to the many Ladino communities in the Balkans and Greece that were wiped out during the Holocaust, a tragedy that is oftentimes overlooked by most people. However, most of the music is a celebration of the Ladino culture and its continued survival and adaptability in the face of migration and hardship, as well as recognition of the ways cultures have been migrating, changing and mixing for thousands of years.

Of course, Mendilow isn't the only member of the band. The quintet is made up of members as diverse as the music they play. In addition to Mendilow, there's jazz vocalist Aubrey Johnson; multi-instrumentalist Andy Bergman (who's been involved with jazz, classical and world music); violinist Tomoko Omura; and percussionist Rich Stein, who has a has a background based in West Africa's drumming traditions, especially Ghanaian drumming. Despite the band's disparate musical styles, Mendilow says the divisions melt away when they're playing. According to Mendilow, the music becomes akin to a conversation, and as they "chat music" with each other, they're able to cross the boundaries of their individual styles-a perfect metaphor for what Mendilow tries to accomplish through music in general.

As for what the band will go on to do after they perform at Brandeis, Mendilow says the members haven't decided yet. He's been writing music for the Ladino project for about a year now and is still finding new songs and new places to take the music. He says the music's age is part of what makes this so compelling, with time working "like a sieve," filtering out the bad songs and leaving the good ones to carry on to the present day. "Bad songs don't survive like good songs," says Mendilow, and right now, he's working with "500 years of the best.