Without doubt, Andy Statman is the creator of a uniquely American fusion music — call it jazz, spiritual, multicultural, or whatever. For the first time since 1999, Statman performs in Seattle on Nov. 30 to benefit Chabad at the University of Washington. The show anchors a three-city Pacific Northwest tour for the Andy Statman Trio and includes a midday Tuesday master class for the UW Klezmer Band.
With 16 albums of his own, and decades of sharing stages with everyone from Itzhak Perlman to Ricky Skaggs to Bela Fleck, Statman, 60, reigns as a groundbreaking artist of both the “newgrass” American roots music movement and the American klezmer renaissance that began in the 1970s.
“I look at the Jewish music as just another part of the Americana,” Statman told JTNews. “Here and in Israel is where the Chassidic “˜klezmer’ developed, from Chassidic vocal music.”
Jewish readers of a certain age may recall being deeply touched by the 1995 album Songs of our Fathers, including its stately interpretation of “Adon Olam” from Statman and his former mandolin teacher, “dawg music” pioneer and Jerry Garcia collaborator David Grisman. The two later followed up with “New Shabbos Waltz.”
Statman’s visit to Seattle is thanks to his longtime friendship with the father of the resident rabbi at Chabad at the UW, Elie Estrin. Based a block north of campus, the Estrin family regularly hosts students for Shabbat and other learning opportunities.
Instead of having the usual fundraising dinner, Estrin said, “we wanted to do something after our own style…open, loose, enjoyable.”
“Music is a big passion of
mine,” said Estrin (whose talk to UW School of Music ethnomusicology students, “The Americanization of Niggunim,” is posted at
www.jewishmusicreport.com). Because the Lakeside Events Center, on the north shore of Lake Union, offers a club atmosphere on two levels, there will be room for music and socializing, Estrin said. A cocktail reception will precede the performance and continue during the music.
“Chabad” is actually an acronym: The initials chet, bet, and dalet for “chochma [wisdom], bina [understanding], and da’at [understanding],” an approach to mystical knowledge developed developed in the Russian town of Lubavitch. Indeed, Statman titled his 2004 album of melodies of the Lubavitcher Chassidim Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge. A Portland show on this tour is also a Chabad benefit.
The last time Statman played Seattle, he was at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island with a quartet, including piano, just after the release of his album Hidden Light. Statman said he decided to drop the piano because “I felt that the chords were too limiting,” he says. “It’s like what Ornette Coleman did,” he added, acknowledging a major jazz
influence.
Jazz, of course, is not the only improvisational tradition, as Statman emphasizes, bringing the point home: “Jewish music is mostly modal music. Chords can color the melody and convert it into something it isn’t. Modal music is powerful and fragile.”
As a teenager, Statman sought out mandolin maestro and new-acoustic pioneer David Grisman to teach him bluegrass. He later turned to learning klezmer clarinet and apprenticed himself to Dave Tarras, the last of the great European masters, who bequeathed his clarinet to Statman. That won’t be the instrument he’ll play in Seattle, though; he’s using a newer one by the same maker.
The Andy Statman Trio’s visit also offers a tremendous learning opportunity for some lucky UW School of Music students: He’ll hold a one-hour master class for the UW Klezmer Band. The public is invited to watch (the room holds about 85 people).
The band’s leader, graduate student and music major Ethan Chessin, heard about Statman’s upcoming visit from the ethnomusicology department, and arranged for the master class. The band is “a young group” of about 20, he says, including four Japanese exchange students. It’s early in their training, and they’ve been trying out the few klezmer tunes they’ve learned so far with field trips and sessions with local and visiting klezmorim.
Statman’s comfort with Klezmer doesn’t stray far from his roots. His spiritual life is as an Orthodox Jew, at home in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, not far from where he grew up in Queens. As a kid going to Hebrew school, he was hungry for music and roots, but not traditionally observant. These days, he doesn’t hide his observance.
“The way I dress is the way I dress,” says the man who now goes everywhere in a black velvet kippa, white shirt, black pants, dangling tzitzit, and the occasional black hat. “Just being a frum [traditionally observant] person, this is the world me and my family live in. I’ve never put on a costume for jobs that I played. I came up playing music in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The way we dressed offstage was the way we dressed onstage. I’m there to play the music and that’s what it’s about.”
Visit www.mandolincafe.com to see chatter about Andy Statman’s Northwest appearances or visit www.andystatman.org for more information about Statman.