Review - Khevrisa 1/9 at CUNY Grad Center NYC

[r l reid <ro...>]

Usual disclaimer - I've had little academic training in music so I can't
always give deep anaysis - just personal subjective impressions.  Works
well for some folk.

So I'm just back from Khevrisa's rumored performance at the CUNY Grad Center
in New York.  And, as expected, it was a pleasure.

I was a little surpised it was just Steven Greenman, Zev Feldman, and Michael
Alpert - not that I'm complaining, how can you go wrong with those three?
But lacking the usual support of Stuart Brotman's sawing old time bass 
sound, I feared it might lack for something.

With the exception of maybe two tunes, though, there were no such worries.

They opened with slower dance numbers, and then went into table music.
Mostly it was the two fydls (Steven usually primo and Michael usually 
secund, as is thier habit - and I think Michaels secund is one big reason
why they can get away without a bass) and Zev's tsimbl.  But one section 
opened with Micheal doing a vocal nigun improvisation, and when he finished
Steven picked up the feel on solo violin, and it then passed to the tsimbl.

At an hour in length, they left the small crowd wanting more.  Clearly some
folks knew what they were going to hear, and others were blown away by the
sound of klezmer that does not have to be fast, loud, or schticky.

Also worth nothing is that while the program was billed as "old european"
klezmer music, it included some recent compositions, I believe by Steven.
The fact that you could not tell what was and wasn't speaks volumes of the
mastery of this style these menches have achieved.

So I beleive they are off to Cleveland for Thursday night.  If that's your 
neck of the woods, I recommend it!

roger reid

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+