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7:30 pm-10:00 pm Thu, Mar 14, 2013

Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird

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28th Jewish Music Festival presents:

Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird: “Bad Old Songs” Album Release Concert
Berlin-based polyglot punk cabaret kapelye

plus Conspiracy of Beards, a 30-member a capella male choir performing the songs of the legendary poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

Doors at 7:15pm. Show begins at 7:30pm
JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA
Tickets now available online

Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird

“Detroit-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter, poet, translator, activist Daniel Kahn concocts furious, tender, electrifying and revolutionary Alienation Klezmer. “Accordion charged with punkrock… the free-spirited attitude of the New York Tzadik circle, cabaret flair, and scraps of Tom Waits.”
-Rolling Stone [Germany]

“Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird are to Klezmer what the Pogues were to Folk: shtetl music spiked with a proper shot of Punk. . . Polyglot, Paneuropean Punkfolk.”

Kahn’s co-conspirators are an all-star band of young New Yiddish Music luminaries:
Jake Shulman-Ment: (violin) NY’s virtuoso back from exile in the wilds of Moldavia and Paris
Michael Tuttle: (bass) US-Berlin expat composer, sound artist, and deep sea bassist
Hampus Melin: (drums) Swedish-Berlin mainstay time-keeper of underground jazz and klezmer

Formed in Berlin in 2005, The Painted Bird has built an international cult following, touring from Moscow to Marseille, Istanbul to Indiana. Playing everywhere from underground punk clubs to Central Park Summer Stage, Turkish cabarets to abandoned Polish synagogues, Daniel Kahn and the band challenge the borders between radical and traditional, lyrical and political, east and west, folk and punk, mama loshn and loshn hora.

“Bad Old Songs”, the fourth album from Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird is a dark and intimate follow-up to their award-winning “Lost Causes” (2011, Oriente Music). Originals like Kahn’s wicked Berliner ostalgie ballad “Good Old Bad Old Days” and the anti-love blues “Love Lays Low” meet polyglot reinventions of Yiddish folk songs and classics from Leonard Cohen and Franz Josef Degenhardt. In the desolate borderlands between Berlin, Detroit, New York, and Yiddishland, these Bad Old Songs are the midnight reveries of a lost time that is yet to come.

“Kahn’s music transcends any label, Jewish or otherwise: it is cosmopolitan in every sense of the word. His dissidents always have their bags packed and ready to go.” – New York Music Daily

“Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird are to Klezmer what the Pogues were to Folk: shtetl music spiked with a proper shot of Punk. . . Polyglot, Paneuropean Punkfolk. Kahn writes great crooked songs between Leonard Cohen and Mordechai Gebirtig, between Nick Cave and Hirsch Glik. With a light hand, he translates and adapts old songs, making them his own.” (-Die Zeit)

Conspiracy of Beards

Conspiracy of Beards is a 30-member a capella male choir which performs exclusively the songs of the legendary poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Inspired by the late performing artist Peter Kadyk and directed by Daryl Henline, the group performs gritty, uplifting renditions Cohen’s songs. Since its foundation in 2003, the choir has performed to dozens of enthusiastic audiences around the San Francisco Bay Area. Notable performances include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco City Hall and the Great American Music Hall, as well as appearances on PBS television station KQED, radio stations KFOG and KPFA, and national radio program West Coast Live. The group became an official non-profit organization in 2006; in 2008, the Beards completed their first mini-tour of the East Coast, performing on radio station WFMU and at several venues in the New York City area, including the Highline Ballroom and the Bowery Poetry Club.

Transforming Cohen’s simple melodies into complex 4 to 5 part harmonies, their sound ranges from tender to robust. One can hear influences of contemporary, jazz, gospel, barbershop, classical and even doo-wop styles in the unique arrangements by chorus members. Using the genius of Cohen’s words, the Beards inspire the audience to ponder personal, political and spiritual life throughout the show, amid laughter and cheers. The songs have real and relatable meaning which affects listeners in an intimate manner. And when sung by a group of sincere gentlemen, it is a rare phenomenon which touches audience members on many levels.

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