klezkamp 2000 (*stupid* long) (and i do mean long)

[yakov (koby) <kchodosh...>]

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klezkamp 2000
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i first heard about klezkamp at CAJE this summer.  at CAJE i was in the teen 
klezmer band (led by sruli & lisa and david schneyer) and, at the excellent 
CAJE night-o'-klez (with klingon klezmer, metropolitan klezmer, and others), 
met ken richmond and shira shazeer of the klezmaniacs in boston.  we all jammed 
the following day, and ken told me "you have to come to klezkamp."

so i did.  i tracked down the jewish-music list somehow and asked where to find 
klezkamp information because web searches were coming up with nothing.  i found 
living traditions, asked for a flyer, got nothing, asked again and got nothing. 
 finally i got two flyers, both of which i almost threw out because they looked 
like cream cheese advertisements.  i signed up for the youth orchestra, ear 
band, instrument group, and ensemble, and got to work on my tape that the flyer 
said was required, and never sent it in.  i'm glad for that because now looking 
back it's kind of embarrassing. they just accepted my self-evaluation of 
"intermediate" and put me in frank london's ensemble, which would've happened 
anyway because i play trombone.

so my mom said she'd drive me.  i said no i'll take public transit.  in the 
interest of my feelings of security, we tried to set up a thing to meet a 
friend's friend but that fell through and i ended up going alone on amtrak.  of 
course, it went completely smoothly.  i sat in the last car and stretched out 
across the seats.  the conductor was funny and the 30th street station is 
gorgeous and i met someone there who was going to klezkamp (she walked up to me 
and said, "are you going to klezkamp?") so we split the cost of the shuttle.

when i got to the hotel there was a line but no chaos.  this was good.  i went 
to check in and they told me i was rooming with one "deena metzler."  this was 
bad.  they said i had to go talk to someone in the other room.  in there a 
harried worker told me i needed to find lauren and gestured to the right.  i 
went to the woman sitting there and asked if she was lauren.  she took one look 
at me and turned away and said, "lauren!" and to my surprise loren walked over 
and asked me what the problem was.  i told him and he straightened it out in 
about five minutes.  this was impressive especially after having braced myself 
for something approximating the full-scale administrative fiasco that is caje.  
so i ended up with steve stelman, a very nice (and hard-working; one night i 
came in at 3:30 and he was sitting on the bed in headphones transcribing music 
learned that day in ensemble!) clarinet player from california.
so then i met mike winograd, the boy wonder from long island.  craziness... i 
had just arrived and already found someone else from the island.  as it turned 
out, he was the only LIer i found there in the whole week.  later on that first 
day we jammed but it didn't go so well because small-group jamming is hard.  
even harder when you don't know the music.

later, i ate dinner and relaxed in my room for a few minutes.  a very few 
minutes. then it was time for the concert, which to me seemed to be a little 
weak, so i left the concert and was greeted by crazy jamming in the lobby.  
this was, in my opinion, the best lobby jam of klezkamp because we still had 
some strength to go along with the adrenaline.  two other trombonists were 
there.  we played and played, songs i knew and songs i didn't know at all.  i 
kind of followed dan for those.  the last song we played was great, "bei mir 
bist du schon" and we really jammed out dixieland-style,  most of us retiring 
at midnight. 
so, the classes... on the first day i decided my first class was dveykus with 
frank london, not the youth orchestra i had signed up for because, as i found 
out, the youth in the youth orchestra were much youthier than the youths i had 
expected to find there.  it seems that, by any empirical standard of measure, i 
am as much an adult at klezkamp as any adult there.

so anyway dveykus, all four days, was awesome. mostly in that class we just 
sang, different hassidic songs. the first few we learned were meterless but 
later we learned table-thumpin' khusidls to rock the casbah.  lots of fun.  
then on the last day we really went all-out and pulled the big tish in the room 
into the middle and thumped on it and sang the khusidls.  i have transcripts of 
some of the music from that class (courtesy adrian the piano guy who 
transcribed the stuff just sitting there in the room)... anyone who wants, 
email and i'll "hook you up."

it was in this first class that i was initiated into the mysterious world of 
personal recording devices.  at klezkamp the machines run the gamut from the 
traditional big cassette style to the small cassette recorders to the 
fashionable digital minidisc recorders, with microphones of all shape and 
style.  myself, i brought neither tape recorder nor camera.  and i have to say 
i think this is really the best way to go.  i had plenty to think about with my 
two instruments and my classes and everything else without computers and 
buttons to push and tapes to swap all over the place.  also, i think it's funny 
that people who would disdain the technology of written music on a staff are 
usually the same people who swear by the somewhat newer technology of sony 
minidiscs.  but maybe i'm just being a purist snob.  in fact, i consider it 
highly likely.

then came the yiddish ear band with merlin sheppard.  merlin is just the man.  
definitely.  he was an awesome bandleader and teacher.  the ear band is the 
best band for beginners who don't know so much music because he really taught - 
at the rate of one tune per day you really have a fighting chance at 
remembering something.  i think the ear band is the best anyway because we 
definitely had the most fun.  especially on the last night.  we went on last - 
after all the ensembles, after all the other dance bands.  merlin started us 
off and we were moving but not really getting into it somehow.  then he took us 
to the next tune but we went to the wrong one.  then we played the A section 
three times.  finally he threw up his hands in frustration and decided he would 
go dance.  he left all of us on the stage feeling kind of sheepish.  so the 
clarinets decide we should get off the stage too.  we marched all around the 
dance floor, underneath a bridge of linked arms and back to the stage.  only I 
delayed, so i ended up standing in the front with merlin.  this was about the 
time that we really started to play, and it got absolutely crazy.  afterwards 
many people stayed on stage and kept playing other bulgars and khusidls but i 
was too tired to keep up and went to the ballroom to hang out and play 
laid-back jazz with adrian (the british pianist, from the ear band).  i 
actually at this point brought lara (lindy hopper from boston) with me and we 
danced in there for a short while.  but she was pretty blitzed. (as if i 
wasn't!)

so anyway my third class after lunch was the trombone class, by dan peisach. he 
was very good, teaching us (actually three trombones, a french horn and a tenor 
sax) some phat bass lines and helping me crack the code of the klezmer scales. 
as i said he was  very good but i was kind of hoping the shirim guy david 
harris would come... but it seems he goes to klezcanada so hopefully i'll see 
him there this summer. anyway the class was very good, i learned useful 
information and got a chance to relax a little bit before
frank london's ensemble.  six trumpets, three trombones, four clarinets, two 
accordions, some saxes, a drummer and a french horn.  and we rocked.  the first 
few days were spent learning some hot freilachs and bulgars.  but then it 
really started coming together when dan peisach brought in his favorite waltz 
that he wanted to play, either "in the trenches of moldovia" or "the hills of 
moldovia" depending on whom you ask.  on the last two days frank was really 
flying, moving around the center of the room and arranging out the waltz and 
then, on the last day with a double-length rehearsal, the suite that would 
become our show.  anyone who was there knows how awesome it ended up.

so after the fourth class i usually found some way to occupy myself before 
dinner. one day i went to what i originally thought was the "epicenter" but is 
actually the "Epes Center" and bought six cds and a book. the goods were:

naftule brandwein - king of the klezmer clarinet (essential)
dave tarras - yiddish-american music (again, essential)
pete sokolow and the original klezmer jazz band - psukay dovid, the swinging 
klezmer (the bargain of klezkamp, at $20 for over two hours of music on a 
double-cd. and awesome music too. a bulletproof combination of klezmer-cum-jazz 
and jazz-cum-klezmer. my current favorite [after only two listens-through; my 
grandmother won't let me get near it] is a killer arrangement of "ot azoy")
hassidic new wave - psycho-semitic (funked-out hassidik music)
frank london - invocations (cantorial music on trumpet)
frank london - the debt (mad eclectic - or, as frank would say, "stupid 
eclectic" -  filmscore stuff)
ben katchor - julius knipl, real estate photographer (surrealist comic strip 
with early-20th-century style visuals, i quickly wrote about this one in 
another message)

[i do plan, by the way, to write fuller reviews of this and other jewish music 
i own...]

later i wound up with another cd - "storysinging dance music" by the ballroom 
roustabouts. this was from the person who owned the drum you might have seen 
around the ballroom and crystal rooms: the drum that said "www.rousta.com." 
this person happened to be kevin macdowell, whom i might be temped to call the 
coolest person on earth if i didn't have to consider people like adrienne 
cooper, frank london, merlin sheppard and henry sapoznik.  anyway he does win 
the prize for coolest "goy" i met at klezkamp, and, additionally, also the 
award for coolest person i met at klezkamp from bloomington, indiana. 

anyway i jammed with him on a few occasions and each time it was just a joy to 
be around him.  the most fun was the last day when he played his storysinging 
dance music ("the day before the camera got invented," "magic rocks," and the 
timeless classic, "i'm going to the library smelling like garlic and stinky 
socks") in the crystal room for the little kids and mike winograd came by too 
and we had a crazy fun jam, going all-out later with "up the lazy river."  he 
gave me his cd for $5 because that was all i had.  earlier, on the third night 
i think, i had jammed with him, nik ammar (the guitarist who always wore the 
hat), the trumpeter from oi-va-voy whose name i forgot, and some other people.  
this, on the third night, was probably my favorite jam of the whole week, 
because we really went all-out, morphing the music in all directions and i 
actually led the part of it that wound up sounding the coolest.

the concerts were fun, at least inasmuch as i remember them.  sunday night was 
a little disappointing, as i said above.  monday night i made a great move by 
sleeping through everything after dinner, so tuesday night i was fresh for some 
seriously strange stuff, as i heard.  i left after the operatic-type stuff 
started up.  no insult on the performers, it's just that i'm not very hip to 
that kind of stuff.  and then i heard later with the wedding thing it got 
better, but i was jamming in the ballroom with kevin and nik at that point, as 
i said above, so i missed that.  wednesday night made up for everything with 
adrienne cooper (there simply is no way to say enough good things about her, 
personally and professionally and in every other way) and judith & tamar cohen 
(sephardic music very welcome after hearing nothing but music in d-freigish and 
d-mishaberach for four days) and alicia svigals. and all the other performers 
whose names i don't remember.
it was particularly cool seeing alicia because she was partly responsible for 
getting me into klezmer in the first place.  flashback sequence. in 1995 or so, 
i was in ninth grade, and my mother was working as a hebrew school principal at 
temple beth israel in port washington, long island.  anyway at TBI they got 
some big ol' arts-type grant and pulled in adrienne cooper to administer it.  
at least that's how i think it happened.  i'm pretty sure.  anyway she did some 
awesome things with that money - chief among them being getting the klezmatics 
to do all sorts of stuff at the shul.  i went to one concert and was hooked.  
so naturally i was excited when i heard that sruli and alicia would be leading 
an "intergenerational klezmer band" there.  after a few weeks, it became not 
quite so intergenerational when the younger kids were separated off into their 
own group for practical purposes, but anyway at those weekly monday night 
rehearsals (which quickly became a looked-forward-to part of each week) i 
learned a lot.  it's strange that i don't seem to particularly remember much 
from that group.  i know that i learned, but i don't seem to remember how the 
rehearsals worked or what i learned then.  mostly it's just isolated moments in 
my head: discussing with sruli (sruli, sruli of the infinite patience) the 
differences between freilakhs and khusidls in the back of the library; grasping 
the concept of "1, 5, 1, 5" bass lines; finally getting the chord changes for 
our simple freilakhs; walking out of the social hall in the rain and climbing 
into sruli's car to listen to a tape he had there.  also, recently i went to 
make a mix on what i thought was an unimportant tape, and mistakenly hit play 
before sending its contents into oblivion.  what i found was a tape alicia had 
made for me from old records with some of the songs we were playing at the 
time.  it was so freaky to hear it again.

so anyway it was cool seeing alicia again after four years. so i walked over to 
her and introduced myself. of course she didn't really remember me, but she was 
happy to hear what i told her.  it made me feel good to have seen her.

every night, after the formal concerts ended were dances with the reading band, 
the ear band and the hassidic disco band.  lots of fun all around, except i 
didn't really like the hassidic group.  i thought the ear band was a little 
corny but it definitely got the job done, especially with the swing.  that was 
a lot of fun, as i got to show off my lindy skills with a great dancer, a girl 
- actually i should say "woman," because, as she pointed out, she was nearly 
old enough to be my mother - from boston.  i noticed a lot of other folks were 
swing dancing too, everyone having a good time.

so... after the last night, after the frank london ensemble, after the ear 
band, after the semi-comatose jazz jam in the ballroom, i went to bed around 
five. in the morning, i got up at ten, packed my clothes, double-checked all my 
bags, and went downstairs to check out and eat lunch.  i sang for a little bit 
with someone but i've forgotten her name.  then i ate standing up and went to 
steal the klezmer brass allstars poster that had materialized in the epicenter 
but someone else got to it before i did.  my father arrived.  i said goodbye to 
my friends who were still there and,  as i had done every other day that week, 
slung my drum bag over one shoulder and my trombone case over the other.  i 
picked up my bags and walked to the car.

...HAPPY NEW YEAR!

-yakov chodosh
1 january 2001, 12:27 a.m.

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