In 1922, a network of Yiddish-language choral groups sprung up around the United States, singing about everything “left” — labor disputes, romanticized folk homelands, even uprisings. Then called the “Freiheit Gezang Farein,” or Freedom Singing Union, the far-flung groups formed an archipelago of homespun European-Jewish tradition. Transplanted as they were from all over Europe, the singers also performed in Russian and a bevy of other languages, but Yiddish was their chief tongue.
For 18 of the last 19 years, Ronn Yedidia has put on his classical pieces in a program called “21st Century Music & On”— it used to be called, year permitting, “20th Century Music & On.” This year’s performance, at the Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center in Manhattan on Sunday at 7:30 p.m., will showcase Yedidia’s first-ever string trio, a composition for violin, viola, and cello.
The trio is emblematic of what is to come in Yedidia’s family. In July, he and his wife Fiona Grant — a piano instructor at the JCC on The Palisades in Tenafly — are expecting identical twin boys.
Jewish texts have long been set to rhythm. Be it the particular cadence with which the Torah or haftarah portions are read aloud or the various biblical sections arranged in stanzas, there is often a meter implied in the verses.
What’s more, with the soaring popularity of hip-hop, many of today’s most salient Jewish artists have found success in marrying textual themes to heavy beats and freestyle lyrics. Matisyahu, rapper Kosha Dillz, and others have made successful entrée into the commercial scene, but few, to date, have tried to capitalize on religious verses’ musical qualities in the classroom.
The Hebrew word “lishmah” refers to the concept of performing an act for no other reason than for the pure pleasure of doing it. When Darshan, a Brooklyn-based electro/hip-hop duo, titled its new EP (Extended Play) “Lishmah,” it was with good reason. The pair, practitioners of an environmentally conscious and hippie-tinged brand of chasidism, was looking to express the particular creative spirit that gave rise to the album.
For starters, instead of waiting on an entire album’s worth of material, songwriter/singer Shir Yaakov Feinstein and rapper Eden Pearlstein (“Eprhyme”) decided to unfurl just five songs. Feinstein and Eprhyme took selections from their Friday afternoon recording sessions at the Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality — a branch of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Conn. — and put them on tape.
With hand drums and a bold imagination, a project called Musical IQ has become increasingly popular among multicultural audiences in and beyond the tristate area. By teaching history and group dynamics in various venues — among them schools, synagogues, and youth groups — Musical IQ animates the central idea that founder Samuel Perkel used to build his curriculum.
That idea: Experiential learning is an invaluable tool.
Said Perkel, originally of Johannesburg, South Africa, “I’ve got memories of doing similarly [interactive] things when I was 4 to 5 years old in pre-school, and being so fantastically excited every time we’d do these programs. With the symbolic imagery these teachers would bring, the seeds were planted as a very young kid.”
If the picture of bluegrass had long ago substituted sunflower seeds for chewing tobacco and a stone balcony for the rickety porch, then perhaps Americana’s signature genre would have made its way to Israel a long time ago. These days, with a growing number of American transplants living in Israel, music that was once staunchly American is becoming more common in Israel’s bars and music houses.
With the slogan “Puttin’ a little South in the Middle East,” the band HOLLER! is everything a band in Israel never was: one Atlantan, four New Jerseyans, and one Israeli who call Israel — and bluegrass — their home. Their name is a market-ready, pithy exclamation, and the music is equally emphatic, a synthesis of loyal Kentucky soul and lyrics that are both ubiquitous and Israel-conscious.
In the early 1980s, clarinetist Margot Leverett wanted to infuse her classical and avant-garde career with something more danceable. Around the same time, Temple Israel Community Center in Cliffside Park wanted to infuse its midnight Selichot service with something more accessible.
They both found klezmer. And this year, they’ve found each other.
Leverett, who got her foot-shuffling fix by helping to found the Klezmatics in 1985, will perform with her “Jewgrass” band, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, at TICC on Sept. 12 at 9:30 p.m. The free concert and subsequent dessert social are part of the synagogue’s annual William Golub Memorial Selichot Concert and Social, a program designed to draw people to late-night Selichot services.
Call it defying the odds, or even defying the cosmos — whatever the phrase, Eric Stein was never supposed to be a musician, and he certainly was never supposed to play klezmer.
The Toronto native and resident grew up with nearly zero chance of being what he is: the founder and mandolinist of Beyond the Pale, a Eurofolk fusion band whose amalgam of klezmer, Balkan, and Romanian styles is now available on “Postcards,” the group’s third disc.
“I’m from a second-generation Canadian family originally from Poland,” explained Stein. “I grew up completely disconnected from Jewish music and Jewish culture and ethnic folk music like (Beyond the Pale) plays. I was into rock and singer-songwriter and folk and jam music.”
At 90, Bernstein used to be, and still is, a number of other things: a music promoter, a family man, an author, and — most notably — the impresario who brought the Beatles to America and organized their landmark Shea Stadium concert in 1965.
Long retired from show business, and semi-confined to his 19th-floor Upper East Side apartment with troublesome leg ailments, Bernstein has found a new vocation: nourishing his house plants with baked goods.
A potted plant next to his living room table bears the remnants of snacks past. Bits of éclair hang from the leaves, discarded embers of pastry suspended above a graveyard of napoleons, bagels, and various unidentifiables.
A slender, wide-eyed young man entered the back room of an East Village wine bar called 10 Degrees on a recent Tuesday, lugging and unzipping a dark guitar case.
With the burnish on his orange instrument absorbing the soft overhead lights, Yotam Silberstein uncorked a swirl of Hebrew.
“Do my friends have seats in the main room?” asked Silberstein of the bar owner, motioning towards a couple on a nearby couch.
“Maybe in 15 minutes,” replied the owner, also in Hebrew.
“Al tidag” — don’t worry — said one of Silberstein’s seated friends. “We can sit back here.”
