Jewish Music Festival Archives

Community Dance Party 2008

JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA, 94709

$12 JCC East Bay members, seniors, students $15 general

Community Dance Party

Get down as the artists of the Ark take off! Jewish dance specialist Bruce Bierman fits the moves of the ancestors into the grooves of your imagination.

Co-sponsored by the Anisman / Sherman Family and Julie Sherman in memory of Ursula Sherman

The Ark presents CYCLICAL RITUALS (part 1): Spring

Jewish Music Festival Artist Residency

Finale of the 23rd Annual Jewish Music Festival

Co-presented by the Eugene & Elinor Friend Center for the Arts, JCCSF and the Consulate General of Israel. Co-sponsored by the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture

JCC San Francisco
3200 California Street, San Francisco 94118

TICKETS: $24 members and seniors; $28 general $18 students ON SALE January 15

The Ark presents CYCLICAL RITUALS (part 1): Spring

This collaboration of nine singularly innovative artists from Israel, Ukraine, New York, New Orleans and the Bay Area is the first of what is envisioned as a series of ritual performances exploring tradition, creativity, time, environment through art and music. They all share a deep commitment to traditional music, ranging from Mississippi Delta blues, to Ukrainian village ballads, as well as Yiddish, Mizrahi, Ladino, cantorial and klezmer musical expression, and in imaginative ways, have used their talent to take these forms in creative new directions. Almost all of them have worked together before in different configurations. This new ensemble will debut in this World Premiere that will be the result of a week-long artist residency.

Ark Artists:
Frank London, Ensemble Coordinator, trumpet and keyboard. This Grammy-winning founding member of the Klezmatics, dubbed the “mystical high priest of New Wave Avant-Klez jazz,” by All About Jazz is one of the most respected composers on the international Jewish music scene.
Aaron Alexander, percussion, founding member Midrash Mish Mosh: “Firmed up by crashing cadenzas and complex unison lines, Alexander’s compositions are marked by gravitating flows and quirky motifs… [his group] combines invigorating arrangements with a prominently transmitted fun factor”. Down Beat
Avi Avital, Israeli mandolin virtuoso. “The mandolin in his hands altered the colors of sounds like a kaleidoscope, dancing to the composer’s inventory of sound, hypnotizing and amusing…” Haaretz
Stuart Brotman, bass, founding member of Brave Old World and Veretski Pass. A moving force in the klezmer revival. He produced The Klezmorim’s Grammy-nominated album, Metropolis, and has performed with Andy Statman, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Itzhak Perlman, as well as Ry Cooder, Geoff and Maria Maldaur and many others.
Jewlia Eisenberg, vocalist, founding member, Charming Hostess. “Eisenberg’s songs are hilarious and touching, and they run the gamut from hard-edged and powerful to sweet and soulful.” New Yorker
Glenn Hartman, accordion and piano, founding member of the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, “This genre-crossing, heroically nutty Crescent City ensemble has a raucous, wild spin on the popular Eastern European revival.” Billboard
Mariana Sadowska, Ukrainian vocalist and harmonium player. “Sometimes a musician has such an inborn desire to communicate that her message naturally becomes universal. Such is the case with [her.]” New York Times
John Schott, guitar, founding member, Dream Kitchen. This Grammy-nominated artist “offers tearing musical effects and sounds like Bill Frisell on LSD. Still, the music never descends into total chaos, although it sometimes glides very close to the edge of madness.” Dresdener Neueste Nachrichten
Jessica Ivry, Cello

Israel @ 60

St. John’s Presbyterian Church
2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705

TICKETS: $20 members, students and seniors; $24 non-members

Israeli master percussionist Chen Zimbalista and Friends

“Totally charismatic . . . able to ignite everybody around him and makes every percussion instrument he touched sing…a rich acoustic experience that celebrates artistic freedom and open sound of life.” — Jerusalem Post

Israeli percussionist Chen Zimbalista has dazzled audiences around the world with an enchanting array of rhythmic sounds that he cajoles from more than forty instruments, played with his lightening quick hands, some of them at the same time. His music – a euphonious blend of pulses and beats – defies classification. A true feast for the senses, his programs are taken from classical, blues, jazz and occasionally rock idioms.

To celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday, Chen will focus the night’s energy on contemporary Israeli composers with pieces by Weisenberg, Shemer, Gronich and a few of his own. The program will also feature pieces by Gershwin, Bloch and Sichon.

Chen’s vibrant marimba will be augmented by percussionist Katja Cooper and Argentine pianist Josè Gallardo. Cooper is Bay Area based and has played throughout the middle east and played with a host of international artists. Gallardo is currently an assistant professor at the University of Mainz, Germany who has performed in Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

Golem

With Lord Loves a Working Man

The Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
Presented in association with The Hub

TICKETS $18

Contrary to popular belief, Golem is neither a towering Jewish Frankenstein who defended the Jews of 17th Century Prague, nor a creature from Lord of the Rings. Golem is a six piece Eastern European folk-punk band.

Fronted by Annette Ezekiel – singer, accordionist, and 5-foot powerhouse; with vocalist, tambourine player, crazy-man Aaron Diskin; violin virtuoso Alicia Jo Rabins; trombonist extraordinaire Curtis Hasselbring; elegant upright bassist Taylor Bergren-Chrisman, and unstoppable drummer Tim Monaghan, Golem’s sound evokes wisps of old-world elegance filtered through the successes and disappointments of new-world dreams. Spending nights in Lower East Side immigrant-owned bagel shops and summers in Eastern Europe, Annette collects Jewish, Gypsy, and Slavic folk songs, and, with Golem, rewrites, adds, edits, and rearranges them along the way. These are the songs to which Eastern European grandparents danced over a century ago, and now Golem has its unwrinkled fans moshing to the same pulsing beats.

Unrequited love stories? Check. Drunken dances? Check. Warnings to future sons-in-law? Check. Dysfunctional families forcing kids to sell bagels on the street? Golem has ‘em all. And they may be in Yiddish (or Russian or French), but when Golem wails that the rent is too high, everybody understands.

Based out of the Mission District of San Francisco, Lord Loves A Working Man is a 9-piece band inspired by the raw and emotive sound of the Southern Soul shouters and horn-driven Rhythm & Blues of the 1960s. Mixing originals with obscure covers, LLAWM puts everything they got into respectfully invoking the spirit of old soul music while giving it their own distinct voice. “Our steamy but sweet fantasies of soulful early-1960s amour now have a soundtrack: Lord Loves a Working Man… These men pour their hearts out in songs that make audience members alternately work up a sweat and hold each other very, very close.” -SF WEEKLY

Golem Website

Ladder of Gold

First Unitarian Church
684 14th Street, Oakland, CA

Teslim (TesLEEM) means both ‘commit’ and ‘surrender’ in Turkish and features violinist Kaila Flexer and Gari Hegedus on various (mostly plucked) strings including Turkish saz, Iraqi oud, Greek lauoto and hand drums. This potent duo performs traditional music from Greece, Turkey and the Middle East as well as original music (by Flexer, Hegedus and others) inspired by these traditions. Ladder of Gold is the fruit of a City of Oakland grant and will feature Sephardic, Mizrahi and original music. Special guests include Shira Kammen and Julian Smedley, violins; Tobias Roberson, percussion and Liza Wallace, harp.

Kaila Flexer Kaila Flexer is a violinist, composer and producer She is best-known locally for having founded and produced Klezmer Mania!, a much-loved annual Bay Area event for over 10 years (1989-2002). She has been at the helm of bands such as Third Ear, Next Village and Kaila Flexer’s Fieldharmonik, ensembles that feature Flexer’s original material. As a composer, her work reflects her deep respect for folk music. She has performed both nationally internationally with her own ensembles as well as with groups including The Hollis Taylor-Kaila Flexer Duo, The Flexer-Marshall Duo, Club Foot Orchestra and KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble. She has recorded two CD’s of original music for Compass Records (Nashville) to critical acclaim.

Gari Hegedus plays violin and viola as well as a variety of stringed instruments from Greece and Turkey including lauoto, oud, saz and hand drums. In addition to playing in Teslim, he also performs with world music group Stellamara and Persian vocalist Hamed Nikpay. He has studied with oud master Naseer Shamma and has recorded and performed with Ross Daly. He has toured with the Mevlevi Dervish (Sufi) Order of America and continues to participate in Turkish ceremonial and devotional gatherings around the country.

This project is commissioned in part by the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program

Ladder of Gold Website

Benzion Miller

Netivot Shalom
1316 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94702

$21 JCC East Bay/Netivot members, seniors and students $25 non-members

Beloved by millions for his cantorial performances throughout the world, Cantor Benzion Miller thrills audiences with his brilliant tenor voice, his astonishing vocal technique and above all with the heartfelt spirituality of his interpretations of cantorial concert masterpieces. Based in Borough Park Brooklyn, Cantor Miller will make his Bay Area debut as part of the 23rd Jewish Music Festival.

A descendant of several generations of cantors, Miller began singing at a very early age. He studied at Bobover yeshivot first in Brooklyn and then in Israel, where he came under the tutelage of the well-known cantor Shmuel Taube. He also benefited from the many accomplished hazzanim who had come from Europe to Israel as refugees. He began his career as cantor of the Hillside Jewish Center in Hillside, New Jersey and subsequently held positions in the Bronx, Montreal, and Toronto. Since 1981 he has been cantor of Temple Beth El of Borough Park in Brooklyn (now known as the Young Israel Beth-El of Borough Park), a pulpit previously served by such illustrious cantors as Mordechai Hershman, Berele Chagy, and Moshe Koussevitzky.

Cantor Miller’s exceptionally busy concert schedule includes a number of performances each year at Israel’s major venues, and at concerts, festivals, and conferences throughout Europe, Great Britain, Australia, and North America. He has been a cantorial soloist at concerts in such disparate places as Johannesburg and Cape Town, Mombasa, Alaska, and Brazil. He has sung with the Israel Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Haifa Symphony, the Barcelona Symphony, the English Players and the Budapest State Opera orchestra. He was part of the first group of cantors to perform in the Soviet-bloc countries before the fall of the iron curtain. He made his Royal Festival Hall (London) debut in 1990 in the premiere of Neil Levin’s production Voice of Jewish Russia, and he sang with the City of Oxford Symphony at the Barbican Centre in 1998.

Cantor Miller has made more than a dozen recordings of Hassidic and other Hebrew liturgical/cantorial and Yiddish music, in some of these preserving much of the authentic Bobover musical tradition. He also is continually expanding the Bobover repertoire with new tunes of his own in the same vein and through his recordings of songs created in America by the third Bobover rebbe.

Accompanied by Daniel Gildar on piano.

Co-sponsored by the Gottesman-Biddle Family

The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind

Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, San Francisco

Osvaldo Golijov, composer, performed by The Bridge Players.

Blindness is as important in this work as dreaming and praying. Composer Osvaldo Golijov has said that, “in order to achieve the highest possible intensity in a performance, musicians should play, metaphorically speaking, ‘blind’. Blindness is probably the secret of great string quartets, those who don’t need their eyes to communicate among them, with the music, or the audience.” Blindness, then, reminds one of the earliest compositions: art that sprang from and relies on our ability to sing and hear, with the power to build castles of sound in our memories.

Eight centuries ago Isaac the Blind, the great kabbalist rabbi of Provence, dictated a manuscript in which he asserted that all things and events in the universe are products of combinations of the Hebrew alphabet’s letters: ‘Their root is in a name, for the letters are like branches, which appear in the manner of flickering flames, mobile, and nevertheless linked to the coal’.

In homage to Issac the Blind, the movements of this work sound as if written in three of the different languages spoken by the Jewish people throughout history. The prelude and the first movement reflect the most ancient, in Aramaic; the second movement is in Yiddish, the rich and fragile language of a long exile; the third movement and postlude are in sacred Hebrew.

This program will also include String Quartet in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn and Lullaby by George Gershwin.

The Bridge Players (Randall Weiss and Leslie Ludena, violin, Natalia Vershilovsa, viola, Robert Howard and Victoria Ehrlich, cello) were formed in 2001 by violinist Randall Weiss. As the ensemble-in-residence for Music in the Mishkan chamber music series at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco. For more information on Music in the Mishkan or the Bridge Players, visit the Sha’ar Zahav website, call 415.861.6932 ×304 or email shaun@shaarzahav.org.

Frank London’s A Night in the Old Marketplace

Opening Night of the 23rd Annual Jewish Music Festival

West Coast Premiere

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 8:00pm
Roda Theatre of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre:
2025 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704

Klezmer giant Frank London has teamed up with acclaimed lyricist Glen Berger and conceiver and director Alex Aron to create twenty-one unique songs based on the legendary 1907 Yiddish play by I.L. Peretz. The groundbreaking score mixes Jewish music, jazz, classical, rock, and world beats with a dose of Kurt Weill and Tom Waits. A stellar group of international musicians comes together to spin this magical tale of villagers who wrestle with ghosts in order to right a past wrong, in a fantastic journey to rediscover the meaning of faith.

Considered one of the best jazz trumpeters in New York, Mr. London is a member of the Grammy-award winning Klezmatics and Hasidic New Wave. His extensive repertoire includes thirty of his own recordings and appearances on more than 200 others. He has performed with artists such as John Zorn, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Mark Ribot, Michael Tilson Thomas, Itzhak Perlman and Gal Costa. He composed music for John Sayles’ The Brother From Another Planet and Men With Guns, Yvonne Rainer’s Murder and Murder, the Czech-American Marionette Theater’s Golem and Tamar Rogoff’s Ivye Project.

Glen Berger is a sixth-year member of New Dramatists. His plays include: Underneath the Lintel (Ovation Award, Sterling Award, Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Best Play, Garland Award for Best Playwriting, one of Time Out New Yorks’ Ten Best Plays of 2001), and O Lovely Gloworm (2005 Portland Drammy Award Winner for Best Script). Glen has received commissions from the Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis, Berkeley Rep, The Alley Theatre, and the Looking Glass Theatre.

Alex Aron, conceiver and director, developed A Night in the Old Marketplace with Glen Berger and Frank London and directed the world premiere at Prince Music Theater (Philadelphia). Other productions include Three Seconds in the Key by Deb Margolin and Eloise and Ray by Stephanie Fleishmann (both for New Georges Theater), Karaoke at the Suicide Shack by Rob Urbinati (QTIP), Out From Under It by Susan Bernfield (Vital Theater). She has directed plays in the Middle East, in Arabic at Assiraj Theater in Ramallah (Palestine) and in Jerusalem. Alex was a 2006/7 Fulbright Scholar to Argentina and is the recipient of various commissions including the Foundation for Jewish Culture.

A Night in the Old Marketplace band features the hottest, most versatile and exciting players on the new Jewish music scene. Drummer Aaron Alexander released his thrash punk Jewish Jazz recording Midrash Mish Mosh on Tzadik records, and is London’s bandmate in the Hasidic New Wave and the Klezmer Brass Allstars. Ron Caswell is tuba player for everyone in New York City, playing at Lincoln Center and in Balkan (Romashka), rock (The Knobs), klezmer (Kleztrophbix) and other groups. Art Bailey and Brandon Seabrook are both alumni of the Klezmer Conservatory Band (as is London). Bailey leads his Orkestra Popilar and is a salsa and jazz virtuoso. Seabrook is the hottest guitarist on the scene, has toured and recorded with Paul Brody’s Sadawi and the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and been influenced by John Bonham, Morton Feldman, Bjork and The Minutemen.

Frank London’s A Night in the Old Marketplace Website

Mayn Yiddishe Velt

Festival “forshpeis” or appetizer: Mayn Yiddishe Velt, Heather Lauren Klein

JCC East Bay
1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley, CA 94709

$12 JCC East Bay members, seniors and students $15 non-members

The soprano voice of this emerging Bay Area artist soars on the wings of classic Yiddish art song and repertoire from operetta, cabaret and theater in Yiddish and English.

Heather Klein has charmed audiences throughout the United States, Canada and Europe with her beguiling stage presence and versatile soprano voice. Ms. Klein comes to the Jewish Music Festival hot off the release of her first album, Mayn Yiddishe Velt, a compilation of theater music from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. In performance and on record, Heather celebrates the music brought to the New York’s Lower East Side by immigrants as well as the innovative work written in the United States at that time for theater and concert halls including art songs, folk, and opera.

Heather will also appear at Temple Beth Sholom in San Leandro on March 14th at 8:00 pm and the San Francisco Public Library on March 12th at 6:00 pm.

Mayn Yiddishe Velt Website

Related Events 2008

Revival of Sephardic Music

Musical scholar Francesco Spagnolo traces the history of the revival of Sephardic music since the 19th century. With musical examples by Teslim, with Kaila Flexer and Gari Hegedus

To register call 510-848-0237 ×126 or Contact the JMF.

Temple Sinai: 2808 Summit Street, Oakland.
$15 / $12 members of JCC East Bay and Temple Sinai

Directions / Parking: 510-451-3263

Sundays, March 2, 9, & 16, 3–5pm; March 30 Community Dance Party 4:00 – 7:00pm

Souls on Fire: Hasidic and Yiddish Dance with Bruce Bierman, instructor

JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley.

$50/$40 Members of Alameda co-sponsors.

Includes the Festival Community Dance Party

The above programs are co-sponsored with Lehrhaus Judaica. Tickets and info: 510-845-6420 or 510-848-0237; www.lehrhaus.org

Co-sponsored by Lehrhaus Judaica

Sunday, March 9, 4pm

Glenn Hartman & the Klezmer Playboys
The Dance Palace, Pt. Reyes Station

Tickets and info: www.dancepalace.org 415-663-1075

Thursday, March 13, 6.30pm

The Legacy of Cantor Reuben Rinder with Cantor Roslyn Barak of Temple Emanu-El in conversation with Francesco Spagnolo. In association with the Judah L. Magnes Museum and Temple Emanu-El

Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., Berkeley, 510-549-6950

www.magnes.org