The Columbus Symphony presents A Klezmer Showcase, with David Krakauer, clarinet and conductor Rossen Milanov, Friday and Saturday, January 13 and 14 at 8 PM in the Southern Theater.
Csardas from Ritter Pasman by Johann Strauss is on the program, along with Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody 2. David Krakauer plays selections from Golijov's Dreams and Prayers of Issac the Blind, his own music and arrangements, and the Klezmer Concerto written for Krakauer by Wlad Marhulets.
Pre-concert interview with David Krakauer one hour before each concert.
Klezmer music, as understood by this elderly Irish boy from Boston, is the music if dance and the music of joy. It is the music of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. There's an influence form the Romany people of Romania. It's music for weddings, for celebration and bolts of light in what ca be a nomadic existence in a loveless world.
I was thinking of this music when recently watching Sidney Lumet's 1960 TV production of The Dybbuk. I don't think there's much in the way of klezmer music to be heard, but the village celebrations, even as done in a cramped NYC TV studio over fifty years ago, shouted for joy. I wonder if there are parallels with the African-American spiritual. Joy coming out of sorrow. There's happiness and laughter in the klezmer music I've heard, but tears are never far away.
"Joy" seems to be the operative word. The term klezmer means 'instruments of music' ;kli means tool or utensil and zemer, making music, or the tools for making music.
Klezmer music came to this country via the great wave of immigration from Eastern Europe . Its improvisation style made a connection American jazz inevitable. I often wonder just how much jazz, or klezmer music is truly improvised, of if part of the special talent to make this music involves making it sound completely spontaneous.
I'm saying "I wonder" a lot, because I don't know. I'm not doing a lot of reading up before these concerts. Instead, I'm listening to a lot of music I have not encountered before now.
David Krakauer will be joining the Columbus symphony this weekend. He's a clarinetist of such phenomenal technique that he can play anything. He's also a composer, and his on Synagogue Wail for Clarinet Solo is on the program
The clarinet was not an feature of the earliest klezmer music. Jews at the time were forbidden to play loud instruments. The violin was the dominant instrument, with added strings, a cymbalom, maybe a xylophone. By the 1850s the prohibition against loud instruments had been lifted-or people stopped caring-and the clarinet took its place as the voice of klezmer music. An instrument fully capable of tears and laughter.
We'll be meeting to composers at these concerts. Saad Haddad was born in Georgia in 1992 and raised in California. Manarah had its first performance on April 1, 2016, with the American Composer's Orchestra at Carnegie Hall conducted by George Manahan. The work is scored for two digitally processed antiphonal trumpets and orchestra. I've heard it elsewhere. Manarah, indeed, makes a joyful noise.
We'll also hear a Klezmer Concerto by Wlad Marhulets.
"Klezmer music came into my life when, as a sixteen year old living in Gdansk, Poland, my brother Damian brought home a CD by a band called Klezmer Madness, featuring the clarinetist David Krakauer. This was music that was so boldly Jewish,. so full of wild energy that a kind of madness enveloped my senses as I listened to it. And even though at the time I had high hopes of becoming a successful visual artist, I decided to become a musician on the spot."
Marhulets wrote his Klezmer Concerto for David Krakauer, who gave the premiere with the Detroit Symphony conducted by Andrew Litton on December 1, 2009.
The composer writes, "Numerous musicians combined klezmer with free jazz, hip-hop, drum and bass, concert and folk music. Hence, klezmer is not a distinct musical style but rather a mixture of multiple influences, It constantly evolves and reinvents itself."
Csardas from Ritter Pasman by Johann Strauss is on the program, along with Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody 2. David Krakauer plays selections from Golijov's Dreams and Prayers of Issac the Blind, his own music and arrangements, and the Klezmer Concerto written for Krakauer by Wlad Marhulets.
Pre-concert interview with David Krakauer one hour before each concert.
Klezmer music, as understood by this elderly Irish boy from Boston, is the music if dance and the music of joy. It is the music of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. There's an influence form the Romany people of Romania. It's music for weddings, for celebration and bolts of light in what ca be a nomadic existence in a loveless world.
I was thinking of this music when recently watching Sidney Lumet's 1960 TV production of The Dybbuk. I don't think there's much in the way of klezmer music to be heard, but the village celebrations, even as done in a cramped NYC TV studio over fifty years ago, shouted for joy. I wonder if there are parallels with the African-American spiritual. Joy coming out of sorrow. There's happiness and laughter in the klezmer music I've heard, but tears are never far away.
"Joy" seems to be the operative word. The term klezmer means 'instruments of music' ;kli means tool or utensil and zemer, making music, or the tools for making music.
Klezmer music came to this country via the great wave of immigration from Eastern Europe . Its improvisation style made a connection American jazz inevitable. I often wonder just how much jazz, or klezmer music is truly improvised, of if part of the special talent to make this music involves making it sound completely spontaneous.
I'm saying "I wonder" a lot, because I don't know. I'm not doing a lot of reading up before these concerts. Instead, I'm listening to a lot of music I have not encountered before now.
David Krakauer will be joining the Columbus symphony this weekend. He's a clarinetist of such phenomenal technique that he can play anything. He's also a composer, and his on Synagogue Wail for Clarinet Solo is on the program
The clarinet was not an feature of the earliest klezmer music. Jews at the time were forbidden to play loud instruments. The violin was the dominant instrument, with added strings, a cymbalom, maybe a xylophone. By the 1850s the prohibition against loud instruments had been lifted-or people stopped caring-and the clarinet took its place as the voice of klezmer music. An instrument fully capable of tears and laughter.
We'll be meeting to composers at these concerts. Saad Haddad was born in Georgia in 1992 and raised in California. Manarah had its first performance on April 1, 2016, with the American Composer's Orchestra at Carnegie Hall conducted by George Manahan. The work is scored for two digitally processed antiphonal trumpets and orchestra. I've heard it elsewhere. Manarah, indeed, makes a joyful noise.
We'll also hear a Klezmer Concerto by Wlad Marhulets.
"Klezmer music came into my life when, as a sixteen year old living in Gdansk, Poland, my brother Damian brought home a CD by a band called Klezmer Madness, featuring the clarinetist David Krakauer. This was music that was so boldly Jewish,. so full of wild energy that a kind of madness enveloped my senses as I listened to it. And even though at the time I had high hopes of becoming a successful visual artist, I decided to become a musician on the spot."
Marhulets wrote his Klezmer Concerto for David Krakauer, who gave the premiere with the Detroit Symphony conducted by Andrew Litton on December 1, 2009.
The composer writes, "Numerous musicians combined klezmer with free jazz, hip-hop, drum and bass, concert and folk music. Hence, klezmer is not a distinct musical style but rather a mixture of multiple influences, It constantly evolves and reinvents itself."
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