By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent
Klezmer Concertos and Encores David Krakauer, clarinet; Scott Goff, flute; Alberto Mizrachi, tenor; other soloists; Barcelona Symphony; Berlin Radio Symphony; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; www.milkenarchive.org or www.naxos.com.
Like Bartok in Hungary, Dvorak in Bohemia, and Tchaikovsky in Russia, the composers on this disc have mined their own folk music to transform it into art for the concert hall. The title of Starer’s “Kli Zemer” is, in fact, the Hebrew source for the word “klezmer,” meaning “vessel of song.”
Starer, who died in 2001, was born in Vienna, managed to get out in 1938, and continued his musical studies first in Jerusalem and then in New York, where he enjoyed a long and distinguished career as composer and teacher. The four movements of this intriguing half-hour work — prayers, dances, melodies, and dedications — feature clarinetist David Krakauer, one of today’s acknowledged masters of Klezmer technique.
Among his more unusual credits, Krakauer has done a klezmer version of old TV show music, including the “Flintstones” theme, recorded for a French label as “Television Freilachs.”
In the music’s quiet moments, Krakauer’s subtle Klezmer “sighs” over strings that recall Bartok, or Gershwin at his most languid. When the music gets up to dance, Stravinsky and Copland speed by. A generation later, Schoenfield (b. 1947) stretches and mocks our familiarity with “Rhapsody in Blue” in “Klezmer Rondos,” and launches us on a wild ride featuring the flute of Seattle Symphony principal flutist Scott Goff as the Klezmer star. Floating over eerie harp and strings, the flute could be one of Chagall’s weird dreams. A voice (Alberto Mizrachi) intones Schoenfield’s wistful setting of a Yiddish poem about a lonely woman at a window.
Yet one generation later among American Jewish composers, “Rocketekya” composer Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960) plugs in an electric viola, joined by violin (original Klezmatic Alicia Svigals) and contrabass to support Krakauer’s clarinet as it does shofar sounds; they wind up doing a Latin dance together. The title of the piece, says the composer, tells of an ancient sound — the shofar’s t’kiah — propelled toward the future: rocket plus t’kiah. Also on this disc: encore pieces by Jacob Weinberg and Abraham Ellstein. As with all the Milken Archive CDs, the historical and musical program notes are very generous.
Klezmer Conservatory Band: A Taste of Paradise Rounder Records, www.rounder.com or www.klezmerconservatory.com.
A beautiful program from one of the founding bands of the current Klezmer renaissance. It’s been over 20 years since they began, and they are now on their ninth album. Rousing dance tunes alternate with thoughtful instrumentals and unaccompanied vocals. An extended jazz solo by pianist Art Bailey cools the ear after the passions of a Greek dance and an early Zionist song, which vocalist Judy Bressler says she learned from a Polish-born elder.
“Bessarabian Bulgur” breaks a traditional tune down into a hip-hop drum and bass duet. A bluesy trumpet rendition of “Sabbath Prayer” from Fiddler on the Roof is itself worth the price of admission. Bressler’s voice manages to be both earthy and heavenly.
The Klezmatics: Rise Up! Shteyt Oyf! Rounder Records, www.rounder.com
The title of this disc lurks within the radical track “I Ain’t Afraid,” a challenge to traditionalists of every religious persuasion, Jew or Christian or Muslim (“Rise up/to your higher power…Watch out/for the ego of the hour”). No dashes between G and D in this tune, which rocks like a gospel spiritual to declare no fear of any name, but a fear “of what you do in the name of your God.”
Sung in both English and Yiddish, this song by Holly Near could sum up the vision of this band. They are wildly fine musicians who have absorbed the modes, melodies and rhythms of Klezmer, transforming Diaspora folk tunes into dances and social commentary. Not a nostalgia band by any means, The Klezmatics can both comfort and unnerve the fan of sentimental Judaica.
In addition to the gospel and shtetl sounds, there are Arabic influences, lush orchestral mixes and spare meditations. Lovingly produced, intensely dramatic, this album is a worthy successor to the band’s earlier Jews with Horns and Possessed. With their in-your-face combination of honor for and break with tradition, the Klezmatics give the contemporary skeptic a spiritual voice.
Metropolitan Klezmer: Surprising Finds and Isle of Klezbos: Greetings from Isle of Klezbos Rhythm Media Records, www.metropolitanklezmer.com.
The drummer and founder of Metropolitan Klezmer, Eve Sicular, is also the leader of its all-female offshoot, Isle of Klezbos (see below). Both bands are associated — just like the Klezmatics — with Manhattan’s edgy incubators of Klezmer music and contemporary urban lifestyles.
Live recording from Joe’s Pub in Greenwich Village’s Public Theatre graces both new discs: a medley of a doyna, an old nigun, and “Abi Gezunt” features vocalist Deborah Karpel.
“Abi Gezunt,” a guaranteed crowd-pleaser with lyrics by Molly Picon, has become almost an anthem of Klezmer. It is, of course, the classic expression of the admonition to enjoy. After all, life’s pleasures are free, “as long as you have your health….”
Alas, Karpel doesn’t quite manage that “kh” sound in “glicklikh sein,” (“be happy”) — she does the “k” sound instead — and it’s the important final phrase in the song. How strange that a voice so otherwise at home in this repertoire should stop at this important barrier to authenticity!
Still, Karpel is soulful in the band’s spare arrangement of the poignant lullaby “Unter Beymer” from a 1940 Moyshe Oysher film. Isle’s accordionist, Rachelle Garniez, explores fun connections between a Latin merengue party tune and a Yiddish theatre standard; and clarinetist Debra Kreisberg slides Klezmer into Brazil.
As for Metropolitan Klezmer, among their “surprising finds” is the “Shadkhn (matchmaker) Tango,” from a 1940 Yiddish movie.
A “Rumanian medley” features the fine world-music accordionist Ismail Butera.
Short tracks of 1960s home recordings of Karpel’s grandfather’s warm Yiddish singing voice enrich the album. There’s also a suite of songs from the Soviet Yiddish theatre. Album notes cover interesting historical information, including the closet struggles, both as a Jew and a gay man, of Lionel Bart (né Begleiter), composer of the musical Oliver! from which the band arranges — in Klezmer style — the Jewish character Fagin’s “Pick a Pocket or Two.”