KlezKamp 2003 best memory - Something to look forward to

[Geraldine Auerbach <jewishmusic...>]

For those who could not get to KlezKamp - and even for those who did and who
want another dose - all is not lost - the klezmer luminaries will weave
their magic again at KlezFest London 2004 from 8 - 12 August an
international Klezmer immersion   at SOAS, University of London, (following
on directly from Ot Azoy! the amazing one week intensive Yiddish course with
Pesakh Fiszman, Sonya Pinkusovich and Khayele Beer 1-6 August)

Take a(nother) chance to work with Jeff Warschauer and Deborah Strauss,
Michael Alpert, Alan Bern, Stu Brodtman, Christian Dawid, Sanne Moerike,
Adrienne Cooper, Josh Dolgin and others - hopefully including Frank London,
in an exciting structured course for instrumentalists, singers, accompanists
and dancers.  We are specially catering this year for proficient musicians
both with little (or no) Klezmer experience as well as for advanced
graduates of previous KlezFests.  There will be Masterclasses for
established bands, and a chance to make new friends and jam into the
night.....

Details are not quite on the JMI Website www.jmi.org.uk  yet, but will be in
a couple of weeks. Meantime you can email JMI for details and registration
forms.  For those who have not yet read it I attach hereunder Abbi Woods
lovely article from the JMI Newsletter - as she said its difficult t
describe KlezFest if you have not been there - she calls it 'Slipping off to
Yiddishland!'

Hope to see many of you .....
Geraldine

Slipping off to Yiddishland - KlezFest July 2003:
Abigail Wood, Music Department, University of Southampton
(to see a picture of Abbi and friends jamming on the grass -  go to
http://www.jmi.org.uk/newsletter/jmi_news7.html#6)
It's that time of year again, when my acquaintances and colleagues give me
sideways glances: 'You spent a week doing what?...' If you weren't there,
it's difficult to sum up KlezFest in just a few words. While the rest of
London was distracted by the Wimbledon final and the hottest weather of the
year, eighty or so of us slipped off to Yiddishland for a week. It began in
style, with a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall showcasing cutting-edge
klezmer music, from the intimate sounds of the Strauss-Warschauer Duo, to
supergroup Brave Old World-surely the Beatles of Yiddishland-and a live
performance of Solomon and SoCalled's HipHopKhasene. The audience was
dancing in the aisles: the KlezFest spirit had arrived.

For four non-stop days we played klezmer music, danced Yiddish dances, ate,
breathed, and slept in Yiddish, from a 9am dance session, through repertory,
instrumental and ensemble classes, to late-night concerts and jam sessions.
Teaching people at all levels, from beginners to advanced klezmorim, the
staff were a group of the most respected professionals of today's Yiddish
music world. It's difficult to underscore enough the importance of this kind
of experience for the developing UK klezmer scene: since the klezmer world
is still heavily North America-based, this is one of few opportunities to
hear at first hand the best musicians playing klezmer today, and to study
with those same musicians, acknowledged world authorities in their fields.
And KlezFest is not only an individual experience. Together we worked on
freylekhs, bulgars and horas and began to build a shared repertory. Last
year, when the staff left the final jam session, away went the klezmer and
out came jazz and showtunes. This year, we played and danced klezmer until
the small hours. To me, this was one step further in the coming of age of
contemporary Yiddish music in the UK: building a community with a common
knowledge of tunes, dance steps, and, not forgetting the popular Ot Azoy
course, the Yiddish language too.

For those new to klezmer, KlezFest offers a week of immersion into not just
a music, but a culture and a way of life. For the more experienced, KlezFest
is a chance to catch up with old acquaintances and make some new ones, to
enjoy speaking Yiddish over the dinner table, to ask questions, share
anecdotes and immerse oneself even deeper into the well of Yiddish music.
For everyone, it's a place not only to make music of a high calibre, but
also to build the shared experiences and memories that make a community.
This year certainly ranged from the weird to the wonderful, as KlezFest made
a political statement in more ways than one. On the first night, an
impromptu klezmer band joined a large anti-fascist demonstration outside
SOAS; nobody there that evening will forget how after an hour or so's music
drowning out their chants, several members of the National Front were
eventually escorted off the scene by the police, followed by a group of
musicians, KlezFesters and Marxists, reclaiming the street as we danced a
slow hora into Russell Square: the music and dancing in the park continued
until dark. Later in the week, we gathered at the House of Commons for an
equally memorable reception as part of the inauguration of the JMI
International Forum for Yiddish Culture.

As KlezFest moves from strength to strength, then, one thing is clear:
Yiddish music is live and kicking, and here to stay in the UK, thanks to the
Jewish Music Institute.









-----Original Message-----
From: owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
[mailto:owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org]On Behalf Of Messiah701 (at) 
aol(dot)com
Sent: 01 January 2004 15:37
To: World music from a Jewish slant
Subject: Re: my KlezKamp 2003 best memory

mmm--that sounds nice-- mw


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