I’ve uploaded some songs from the first night of KlezKabaret. This was an open jam session featuring Arkady Goldenshteyn, Frank London, and Alex Kontorovich.

Keith Wolzinger
Klezmer Podcast

In just a few minutes we’ll finish loading the car and be on our way. The printer has just finished its self-test, so I know that it was working before I bundle it up. We’ve been working hard with the Camp Bnai Brith staff, and it looks like internet connectivity will be a “go.” We’ll see! If so, expect a next blog post in just a few hours….

Mark your calendars for KlezKanada 2007. It will start Monday evening, August 20, 2007 and finish Sunday morning, August 26, 2007.  The schedule at Camp B’nai Brith requires us to start “a day later” in the week. Exactly 300 days to go!

Bob Blacksberg

Thanks to Claire Dubin, a fellow Philadelphian, the Gallery now includes close-up pictures from the 2006 faculty concerts, a selection from the Shabbes march and expanded coverage of the East Meets West concert. Thanks again to Harold Perlman and Claire for sharing their pictures. We look forward to receiving and posting more.

 Bob Blacksberg

We’ll be catching up on blog posts (I hope) from camp now that we are home. What I really want to report is that Emily Socolov and Robin Young began selling ponchos, lap blankets, and other items to raise money for the family of the German Goldenshteyn, z”l. They managed to raise over $700! Emily delivered the money this week.

Don’t forget that there is a concert/dance fundraiser for German in Brooklyn, NY, on September 17th. Many of the KlezKanada staff will be there, and of course, the music will be great. See ya’ll there.

It is the bas Mitzve of Ilana Dresdner, daughter of long-time KlezKanada staffer Sruli Dresdner. You can hear the brass band practicing outside. They will be working soon.
Ilana is welcomed to the bima, the stage, by the full string band. Michael Alpert acts the part of Master of Ceremonies and welcomes her in Yiddish: “This is not a religious ceremony, but she will be giving blessings and reading from the torah.”
(more…)

How wonderful to make a dream come true.  I have alway wanted to learn to play the drums.  I lived vicariously through my son for years…. I heard my friends talk about drumming when they went to weekend workshops. One of my close women friends was drummed in to her simcha chomah, and I was starting to feel left out.  Then, that old Chinese proverb “When a student is ready, a teacher is found” came true.

The package came from KlezKanada, and there was a program given by a woman who was even older than I am. “Girls Don’t Play the Drums”.  Yesterday I went to my first class, and my learning began:  how to hold the drumsticks. “The sticks are to be held with the thumb and the first finger.” “Hold the elbows just so….” ”Hit the pad in the center.” And then we learned all the basic rhythms. 

Elaine Watts Hoffman has the patience, an ability to translate her knowledge,  and love of her instrument, and can  transmit all of these to this mixed bag of students from young prepubscent girls to an old broad like me. One, two three four five … start with your left, alternate your hands …  don’t hit too hard, remember this is an musical instrument.”  “Listen to me while I play the bass drum … listen to the rhythm and play faster”. ”Not so loud” (and she was wearing earplugs).

As I heard her speak, I was reminded of one of my graduate school professors. He used to say this: “I don’t understand you any better when you talk louder!”

This morning, I am faced with a very difficult choice at 10.45 hours, do I go to hear Bikel or go to second drumming class?  Guess which one!

While you are going to workshops, working in ensembles or relaxing by the lake there is a hive of activitiy in a building tucked away in the woods behind the dining hall.  As you approach this building you can feel the energy emanating from its inside and spilling out onto its pourch.  Its our Klez Kanada children.  Seven violins, 2 flutes, 1 trombone, clarinet, recorder, Melodica, 2 stray dragonflies and purple gimp combine to produce, under the direction of  Sruli Dresdner’s and Lisa Mayer’s beautiful music.   The kids are either putting together their first tune to be played at the flag pole before meals or demonstrating artistic talents.

Sruli, using his recorder, assigns notes to various intruments over and over and over again G to C to D to E.  It is no easy task. Sruli and Lisa have to search for wandering musicians who at a whim leave the group to hug and schmooz with friends from Klez Kanada’s past.  The fearless Sruli and Lisa eventually round the aspiring musicians together as they explore the 4 notes of the 6 note song they are preparing for your Kvelling pleasure later in the week.  Alas one more interuption as a joyous Klemzmer trumpeter belts out the Michigan State fight song.  Sruli, with his Rebbe-like patience announces we will play the first half today and after cookies tomorrow we will learn the second half.  So do not forget about that special place in the woods behind the dining hall come visit to see the future superstars of Klezmer music rehearsing.

As I walk down the road to the Retreat Center where many community events here are held, I notice license plates from the expected Ottowa and Quebec, and then New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois—we haven’t even consider the folks who braved the current airline security scare and came from Brazil, the Ukraine, the Netherlands, Estonia, Russia, the UK….

But you hear the music. It has changed since the revival began. You still have the same old oldies, but you hear them in more ways, and you hear new sounds, sometimes on new instruments, that weren’t there before.