Re: survey of who is doing what jewish music

[W. Morrison <sushiqn...>]

[...]

>Okay, now it's the turn of the person on my left ;-).
>
>ari


OK ari, although I suspect I'm slightly to your right :)

My band, Klezmos ("World-Klez music" tm), is my major outlet for Jewish
musical expression as an instrumentalist. We play "old-world" klezmer,
whatever that is, mixed with whatever else we like that seems to go with it
(including swing, irish, tango, scandinavian, greek, balkan, french, and
other "ethnic" music). But when we play a klezmer tune, we're fairly
conservative about interpretation -- it's just that we play a lot of dances
and we like to medley compatible tunes from different traditions.

I listen to lots of other stuff, including different kinds of Jewish music.
I love Yiddish song, especially the old traditional songs; and Sephardic
melodies, along with other Mediterranean music. I'm a lot more interested
in the kinds of songs people sing with their families, than material more
geared to performance or recording.
I like to find unusual melodies for z'mirot (table songs for Shabbat and
holidays), and I have a very strong interest in cantorial music (including
nusach and trope), especially as it relates to actual tefillah -- the
concert material, not so much. I like to experiment setting traditional
prayers to unusual melodies. For example, I have borrowed a klezmer tune
for Shehu Noteh Shamayim (part of the Aleynu prayer), to replace that
dreadful Itsy Bitsy Spider melody - the cantor at my shul is now using it
with the congregation, and another cantor has asked for the sheet music. I
use a snippet of a Prokofiev (?) symphony for Ma Tovu, an English country
waltz for Adon Olam, a Brazilian forro tune for D'ror Yikra, etc. Whether
these last 3 really qualify as Jewish music to everyone is rather
unimportant to me, and I'm not interested in debating the point, just in
case... :)

OK, that's enough from here. Next?


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Wendy Morrison - Klezmos
"Of all the Klezmer bands in the U.S., we're one of them"
sushiqn (at) cais(dot)com, work:hmtrad (at) hmtrad(dot)com
http://www.dc.net/wendy/klezmos.html
http://www.hmtrad.com/wendy/wendy.html
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