Nu Haven Kapelye's David Chevan, Will Bartlett, Dana Astmann perform at WNHH FM. December holiday music was in free swing — in Yiddish.Three core members of New Haven’s Nu Haven Kapelye community orchestra — bassist David Chevan, accordionist Dana Astmann, clarinetist Will Bartlett — were performing a mix of Hanukkah and traditional klezmer tunes inside WNHHFM’s studio for an appearance on the ​“Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” tiniest-of-all-tiniest-desks program.We were lucky to catch them; late December is a busy time for Nu Haven Kapelye. They have three Hanukkah gigs lined up over the next week leading up to the first night of the holiday on Dec. 25.They also played a first-ever Hanukkah/klezmer show as part of the Festival of Trees and Traditions at Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum, the latest example of how stagers of Christmas events sometimes try to make room for traditions of the seasonal minor Jewish holiday as well.Klezmer itself has become a melding of religious and secular tradition in America. Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries brought the improvisational folk dance music here from Eastern Europe. Klezmer musicians fell in with jazz musicians, and they all found they had a vibe in common, leading to a century-plus evolution of the music. Nu Haven Kapelye, formed in New Haven a decade ago, has kept the music alive year-round with a rotating cast of community collaborators.On ​“Acoustic Thursday,” the orchestra’s Chevan-Astmann-Bartlett iteration nodded to that American jazz-Eastern European jazz cross-pollination by performing ​“Palesteena.” J. Russell Robinson wrote the song in 1920, when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded it. It has become a staple of some modern klezmer groups; you can hear the trio’s version of it, and the way it echoes both Dixieland and klezmer tropes, at the 8:43 mark in the video below in this story.And at 22:55 in the video you can watch the trio merge Hanukkah and klezmer tradition with a performance of Morris Rosenfeld’s ​“O, Ir Kleyne Likhtelekh,” Yiddish for ​“Oh, You Little Candles.”You can catch Nu Haven Kapelye holiday concerts at Hamden’s Best Video on Saturday, Dec. 21, beginning at 7 p.m.; Tower One on New Haven’s Tower Lane Monday, Dec. 23, at 7 p.m.; and at the 26th annual family holiday concert at Congregational Mishkan Israel Wednesday, Dec. 25, starting at 4 p.m.And you can catch the full performance and discussion with Nu Haven Kapelye’s David Chevan, Dana Astmann, and Will Bartlett on WNHHFM’s ​“Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” in the below video.Previous ​“Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” performances:• Brandt Taylor & Chris DePino• Shellye Valauskas and Dean Falcone• Brian Ember• Ceschi• Wally• Sketch Tha Cataclysm• MJ Bones• Johnathan Moore• Charlie Widmer• Sam Carlson• Steve Mednick• Frank Critelli