Sharing the Mic

T

he first time the Berko Brothers played and sang together in public was at a yeshivah Shabbos, during Avrumi’s first year, when he joined his older brother SHEA at Yeshiva Vien in Boro Park . Today they’re at the top of New York’s wedding scene, where Shea’s dynamic vocals command an eager following. Avrumi, who’s become a sought-after producer and arranger, is still behind his keyboard, fingers flashing as they fly across his keys, and ever smiling.

For a few years after his marriage, Shea, today in his low thirties, worked as a counselor in the Tzelemer camp in the Catskills. He was a natural choice to sing at kumzitzes and for the annual mock wedding, and it was there that his singing first drew attention. “My friends started to beg me to sing at their weddings, and they were pretty serious. Around that time, Avrumi got married, and he said to me, ‘Shea, let’s do it together. I’ll play and you’ll sing.’ With the help of a lot of friends, and, Shea says, an overdose of siyata d’Shmaya, things fell into place. The Berko brothers made their debut on the music scene, and they haven’t looked back.

Avrumi, one of today’s popular younger arrangers and keyboard players, admits that he’s mostly a self-taught musician. His first keyboard was an afikomen present from his grandmother, at age eight or nine, and he taught himself to play it. At the time, he was a child soloist with a clear, angelic voice, having sung on some early Lipa albums and Isaac Honig and Michoel Schnitzler CDs. “But then I got into the keyboard, and as I got older, I basically shelved the singing.”

As a bochur, he taught himself musical notation and some music theory. But once married and thinking about making parnassah from music, he took lessons.