Josh Waletzky's "Crossing the Shadows"

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Subject:      Josh Waletzky's "Crossing the Shadows", premiere 
              concert of original Yiddish songs and melodies



The new songs and melodies to be performed at this concert are 
exquisite, wonderous, modern, and yet completely rooted in the
tradition (unusual in these days of musical hybrids).  They will, 
mertseshem, be recorded on a CD in 1998.  These performers are 
also ready to travel with this program after this premiere.  
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                      "CROSSING THE SHADOWS" 

                Sunday, December 14, 1997 at 3 p.m.
  
                       Hebrew Union College 
                   Jewish Institute of Religion 
                        1 West 4th Street  
                           New York, NY

       (on West 4th Street between Mercer Street and Broadway)
            Tickets are $8; $6 for students and seniors


CROSSING THE SHADOWS (ARIBER DI SHOTNS) is a concert of original 
Yiddish songs and melodies, with words and music by Josh Waletzky.  
It is the first program of original Yiddish music written and 
performed by American-born artists in over 25 years.  Josh is 
joined by colleagues Jeff Warschauer and Deborah Strauss in a 
contemporary performance style that brings together Yiddish song 
and instrumental traditions.  The texts spring from both deeply 
personal and communal concerns, ranging from love songs and 
lullaby to mixed feelings over the re-emergence of Jewish music in 
Europe and anguish over the peace prospects in Israel.  The moods 
are celebrative, contemplative, timely, timeless.

Featuring:          DEBORAH STRAUSS (violin)
                    JOSH WALETZKY (vocals, piano)
                    JEFF WARSCHAUER (guitar, mandolin)




Program Background

Josh Waletzky is a film maker and a founder of the klezmer revival, 
who has been writing music in a traditional Jewish style since his 
early teens.  His settings of Yiddish texts were first recorded on 
"Vaserl", a record of new Yiddish music by young people issued in the 
late 1970s by Yugntruf.  Some of his compositions have been performed 
and recorded through the years all over the world.  As a documentary 
film director he has worked often with Eastern European Jewish themes, 
particularly in "Image Before My Eyes" and "Partisans of Vilna".  He 
"met" Deborah Strauss and Jeff Warschauer through his work as film 
editor of the Emmy Award-winning PBS special "Itzhak Perlman: In the 
Fiddler's House".  (Some months later he met them by happy coincidence 
on the streets of his native Brooklyn, which all three now call home.)  
He was inspired by his work on "Fiddler's House" to renew his activity 
in Yiddish music, also writing, for the first time, original words with 
many of the melodies.  The current collaboration brings together three 
artists with rich and divergent backgrounds in ensemble and solo 
performance and a common commitment to the strength and beauty of a 
living musical language.


Artist Biographies

Deborah Strauss (violin) is considered one of the finest practitioners
of traditional Jewish violin style today.  She is a member of the
Chicago Klezmer Ensemble and performs with Kurt Bjorling as a 
violin/tsimbl duo.   In addition, Deborah has worked with Brave Old 
World, Yiddish singer Adrienne Cooper, and with the Klezmer Conservatory 
Band.  In 1994 and 1995 she appeared as a soloist at the Festival of 
Jewish Culture in Cracow, Poland, and in 1996, performed and led 
workshops at the Amsterdam International Yiddish Festival.  Deborah is 
featured in the Emmy award-winning film, "Itzhak Perlman: In the
Fiddler's House" and appears on Kapelye's latest CD, "On the Air:
Old-Time Jewish American Radio".  Deborah teaches privately and at 
many Yiddish culture workshops, including KlezKamp, Buffalo on the Roof 
and KlezKanada.  She holds a B.M in violin performance from Rutgers 
University, and is completing her M.A. in ethnomusicology at the 
University of Chicago.

Josh Waletzky (vocals, piano) has taught Yiddish songs in many 
settings over the years, working with children and adults, amateurs 
and professionals.  Camp Boiberik, the Yiddish afternoon schools, YIVO 
and Columbia University's Yiddish Program, KlezKamp and the National 
Yiddish Book Center are his musical home town.  His father, Sholom, 
was the first of many wonderful teachers in the richness of Yiddish 
melody.  As a high school student he studied piano and theory at the 
Juilliard Preparatory Division, including a semester of composition 
with Peter Schickele.  He sang with the Yugntruf Ensemble, co-composing 
a Yiddish operetta with Zalmen Mlotek.  As he moved into film making, 
he continued his active interest in Yiddish music.  He composed an 
original score for his Yiddish-language film, "Dos Mazl", (based on a 
Yiddish folktale) at NYU Film School.  His now-classic film on pre-war 
Jewish Poland, "Image Before My Eyes", makes extensive and 
ground-breaking use of field recordings of klezmer and vocal music.  
He was one of the original members of Kapelye, a pioneering klezmer 
revival band, and can be heard on Kapelye's first recording, "Future 
and Past" (vocals, piano).  His film on Jewish resistance, "Partisans 
of Vilna", also makes critical use of Yiddish music.  He co-produced, 
and performed (vocals, piano) on, the CD of the same name, which 
became the first Yiddish record to receive a Grammy nomination.  
While he has continued to present occasional Yiddish song programs, 
ACROSS THE SHADOWS is his first major performance in a decade.

Jeff Warschauer (guitar, mandolin) is known internationally as one of 
the foremost exponents of the klezmer mandolin, as a unique innovator 
in the development of an authentic klezmer guitar style, and as an 
expressive Yiddish singer.  He has played and taught throughout the 
United States, Western Europe, Poland, the Czech Republic, the former 
Soviet Union, Australia and New Zealand.  He is a member of the 
Klezmer Conservatory Band, has performed with the Bolshoi Ballet, and 
has been composer, music director and/or featured instrumentalist for 
numerous theatrical productions, recordings and filmtracks.  His own 
group, the Jeff Warschauer Klezmer Ensemble, has performed on 
numerous occasions in the United States, as well as at international 
festivals in Poland and the Netherlands.  He also performs in duo and 
trio combinations with Dutch Yiddish singer Shura Lipovsky, and New 
York pianist Zalmen Mlotek.  He appears, both on-stage and in the pit, 
with the musical "Shlemiel the First", and appears in both the film and 
the CD entitled "Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler's House".  In 1986 he 
won the Amalgamated Bank Prize for Yiddish Studies at Oxford 
University's Summer Programme, and in 1995 returned to lecture on the 
history of klezmer music at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies.  
He was awarded a 1990 Massachusetts Artist Fellowship for his klezmer 
mandolin and solo guitar work.  A graduate of the New England 
Conservatory of Music, Jeff has taught for ten years at the KlezKamp 
Yiddish Folk Arts Program.


To arrange for performance of "CROSSING THE SHADOWS", write to:  
    
           Josh Waletzky 
           419 Sterling Place 
           Brooklyn, New York  11238

Or by e-mail at:  reyzl (at) flash(dot)net


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