Re: questions

[Sandra Layman <sandralayman...>]

<<The revival was built on a "trustworthy, talented
> musician" writing out the transcriptions.>>

Perhaps I misunderstood Reyzl's very interesting message. Or maybe it was
because I was benighted in the Pacific Northwest and didn't know what I was
supposed to do. Anyway, off here on the west coast, I was learning this
music mostly by ear.

I starting playing klezmer music in 1978 and never made transcriptions for
myself. I learned almost all of the klezmer repertoire from listening to
78's (mostly from Marty Schwartz's collection). Also, I was lucky in having
been able to hang out with musicians from Romania and Greece and elsewhere,
starting in 1977. I hung out every now and then with the guys in the
Klezmorim, and I certainly don't remember needing music stands for that. Nor
do I remember Joel Rubin and Lisa Rose, with whom I started playing in the
early 1980s, playing off of transcriptions. People playing piano or other
accompanying instruments *would* make chord charts.

Later on, there were also a few tunes that my first klezmer band in Seattle
(1980-82) learned from old collections like Kammen.

Eventually, I did make some simple transcriptions for students of mine who
preferred to learn tunes from sheet music. Those were tunes that I'd learned
by ear myself.

Of course, I don't know how other people back then were learning. Being in
Seattle most of the time, I was isolated. However, it's hard for me to
believe that my experience is unusual.

Thanks,
Sandra


----- Original Message -----
From: "Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky" <yiddish (at) waletzky(dot)com>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 6:50 AM
Subject: RE: questions


[interesting commentary snipped]

>  Transcriptions were preferable for Perlman.  The fact is that musicians
> play from transcriptions so much more often than anyone imagines - today,
> in the old days, and throughout the klezmer revival.  The quality of the
> music then reflects the skillfulness of the transcriber more than the
> talent of the musician, including, in some cases I have seen, the
> transcriber's clout/insistence that the musician play the music exactly
"as
> it is written".  The revival was built on a "trustworthy, talented
> musician" writing out the transcriptions.

[snip]

> Uh oh, did I just tell some big secrets?   Tse, tse, tse.
>
>
> Reyzl


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