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| Jewish Weddings Series Opens With Ashkenazi Wedding (11.10.04) |
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| Tickets/Registration: 212.415.5500 |
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| Media Contact: Beverly Greenfield, 212.415.5452, email |
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| MUSIC AND DANCE OF THE JEWISH WEDDING |
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| Walter Zev Feldman, Artistic Director |
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Ashkenazi Wedding
Featuring KHEVRISA
Wednesday, November 10, 8:00 pm, $25
Bukharan Wedding
Wednesday, December 8, 8:00 pm, $25
Moroccan Henna & Wedding
Tuesday, February 3, 8:00 pm, $25
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| New York, NY, October, 19, 2004—The 92nd Street Y presents three concerts featuring re-creations of the music and dance of three radically different Jewish wedding traditions: European Ashkenazic, Bukharan (originating in the area now known as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) and Moroccan. |
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| On Wednesday, November 10 at 8:00 p.m. , the series kicks off with a re-enactment of a traditional Ashkenazi wedding, featuring music and dance that was a part of Jewish weddings in Eastern Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The program bears only a passing relationship to the modern-day Ashkenazi wedding seen in Hasidic communities, which have preserved primarily the religious aspects of the wedding, but not the secular — and sometimes vaguely pagan — customs that were once common. The concert at the Y follows the course of the traditional Ashkenazi wedding ceremonies, which generally took place over several days leading up to the actual wedding. Observances began with meditative tunes for the morning of the wedding and concluded with joyful dancing for the ensuing celebration. The music is announced and punctuated throughout by the badkhn, the traditional master of ceremonies, who sets the requisite tone, ranging from dramatic to pious to humorous. |
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| The program is performed by world-renowned traditional klezmer band Khevrisa: Zev Feldman, cimbalom (Eastern-European hammered dulcimer) and dancer; Michael Alpert, vocals, sekund violin and dancer; Steven Greenman, violin; and Stuart Brotman, double bass. Joining Khevrisa are guests Kurt Bjorling, clarinet; Deborah Strauss, violin; and dancers Joanne Borts, Hélène Domergue-Zilberberg and Steven Weintraub. Many of the members of Khevrisa and the gathered ensemble, notably Michael Alpert and Zev Feldman, learned the musical and dance traditions directly from those who carried it to America from the "old world." They grew up and studied in post-Holocaust immigrant communities in the United States, where traditional Ashkenazic music and dance was practiced, preserved and handed down to the next generation. |
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| The concert at the 92nd Street Y expands on material recorded on Khevrisa's CD "European Klezmer Music" (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2000). |
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THE ASHKENAZI WEDDING:
FROM SOMBER PREPARATION TO JOYFUL DANCING |
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| The concert begins with the music of the kale vechere (KAHL-uh VETCH-er-ay), the party for the bride and her friends held at the end of the Sabbath prior to the wedding. The mood of this gathering is somber, with sad songs of parting as the bride prepares to leave her family and friends for a new life with her husband. The same mood continues on the morning of the wedding, which is heralded with the dobriden, a dignified melody in 3/4 played by the violin and cimbalom. As the day progresses, the wedding band marches through the street, gathering guests to the wedding with khasene gehat ("they are married"), and close relatives are greeted upon arrival by tunes such as the mazeltov or by serious modal improvisations known as shteyger. The cathartic moment of the wedding ceremony is the bride's lament, known as kale basetsn or kale baveynen (seating or bemoaning of the bride), where the badkhn paints a somber picture of the life of a married woman, singing prayer-like tunes in a minor key, while the violin and cimbalom "answer" with improvisations in different but complementary styles. The khupe marsh (canopy march) follows, a tune that leads guests to the wedding canopy, where the actual betrothal ceremony takes place. The concert features two versions of the khupe marsh — one composed by violinist Steven Greenman, and the second a tune played by the Lepianski family of cimbalists in Belarus. After the rabbi sings the wedding blessings and marries the couple, the groom traditionally breaks a glass to signify the end of the ceremony, and the somber mood is broken, switching instantaneously into festive shouts of mazeltov! (good luck!). This moment closes the first half of the concert. |
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| The second half opens with the ritual music and dancing of the wedding feast, in which the fathers-in law, elder relatives, rabbi, and other honored guests dance to slow elaborate tunes. Among the most famous of these dances is the broygez tants ("dance of anger") between the two mothers-in-law; in this mime-dance, one woman generally acts offended while the other attempts to mollify her, and the scene ends with a sholem tants ("dance of peace"), in which they become reconciled. Following these communal dances, music is performed for guests seated at tables. This music consists mostly of solos or duets by the violin and cimbalom or clarinet and bass, and served as a way to honor special guests at the wedding as well as an opportunity for the best klezmorim to showcase new tunes. The concert — and the wedding — then proceeds to dancing among the guests, the centerpiece of which is the sher, an elaborate mixed (male-and-female) contra-dance based on European court dancing of the 17th and 18th centuries, but identified strongly as a Jewish dance. The shers performed in the concert include the oldest example of the form that is known today, composed by the Moldavian fiddler Selig Lemisch in the mid-19th century, as well as a sher composed by Zev Feldman in 2000. |
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| The sher reflects the longstanding tension in the Jewish wedding tradition between secular and religious elements. Artistic director Zev Feldman says, "this dance has been part of our folklore for 500 years, and the rabbis were condemning it for 500 years." In the last 50 years — especially in the post-World-War-II Hasidic and orthodox communities — the tension between secular and even pagan customs once found in Jewish weddings have given way to more of a split between secular and religious traditions. In secular Jewish communities, the balance has shifted in the opposite direction, with many of the traditional wedding customs being largely eclipsed by primarily secular practices drawn from the surrounding culture. |
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| This series was developed by Hanna Arie-Gaifman, director of the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts, and ethnomusicologist Walter Zev Feldman, who serves as artistic director of the series. |
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| JEWISH WEDDINGS: EXPLORING SEPHARDIC TRADITIONS |
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| On Wednesday, December 8, at 8:00 p.m., the Jewish Weddings series continues with a Jewish wedding ceremony from the former BUHKARAN EMIRATE (today's Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). The ceremonies combine Iranian and Turkish traditions and include singing, dancing, drumming and improvised verses in Tajik and Uzbek. The performance is led by Tofakhon Pinkhasova, the undisputed master among the current generation of sozandas. Sozandas are women considered to have almost shamanic powers; their lineage often goes back several generations Featured musicians include members of the ensemble Shashmaqam, a Bukharan instrumental group based in Queens. |
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| On Thursday, February 3, at 8:00 p.m., the MOROCCAN HENNA & WEDDING takes center stage. The Charles Edry Ensemble, a leading Moroccan Jewish wedding ensemble based in Montreal, performs a program featuring music of the Judeo-Arabic tradition of Casablanca and other Moroccan cities. Songs of the Henna ceremony held for the bride prior to the wedding will be performed in addition to the instrumental, vocal and dance music of the wedding itself. |
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| ABOUT THE ARTISTS |
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| Khevrisa was founded in 1998 by Walter Zev Feldman and Steven Greenman, Khevrisa features two of the central figures of the Klezmer Revival — the vocalist, fiddler and dancer Michael Alpert and the bassist Stuart Brotman. Khevrisa performs klezmer music of 19th and early 20th century European klezmorim on the original klezmer instrumentation of violins, cimbalom and bass. Khevrisa's repertoire also includes new compositions by Greenman and Feldman in traditional style. Khevrisa has performed at the Festival of Jewish Culture in Cracow, at the Pfingskonzerte in Ittingen, at the Concert Gebow in Amsterdam, the Vredenburg in Utrecht, and at Symphony Space in New York. Its CD European Klezmer Music was issued by Smithsonian Folkways in 2000. |
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| Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music, and a performer on the klezmer dulcimer, cimbal (tsimbl). During the mid-1970s he and Andy Statman studied with Dave Tarras and were two of the creators of the klezmer revival; at that time Feldman reintroduced the dulcimer cimbal into klezmer music with his classic LP Jewish Klezmer Music (1979). Today he performs on the cimbal with the group Khevrisa and elsewhere. Having grown up with traditional Ashkenazic, Greek and Armenian dance, during the 1970s he researched and taught Turkish folkdance. Today Feldman is a teacher and performer of Ashkenazic dance, leading workshops in the U.S., Canada, England,Germany and Israel. He regularly teaches at the Klezmer Wochen in Weimar and at KlezKanada. |
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| Feldman is a fellow of the Center for Jewish Music Research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and is a co-editor of the Medimuses Project for Modal Musics of the Mediterranean for the EnChordais School in Thessaloniki, Greece. He recently co-produced the CD Tanburi Isakwith the Bezmara Ensemble of Istanbul for EnChordais. In 2003 he curated the concert series "The Revival of Klezmer and Yiddish Music in New York" at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the artistic director of the current series "Music and Dance of the Jewish Wedding" at the 92nd Street Y. Next in the series is "Bukharan Wedding," Wednesday, December 8, 2004 and the final program is the "Moroccan Henna & Wedding," Thursday, February 3, 2005. |
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| For complete biographies of the artists performing in this program, please contact Beverly Greenfield at email or 212-415-5452. |
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| ABOUT THE 92ND STREET Y |
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| Since its concert series began in 1934, what is now the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts, endowed through the generous support of Joan and Preston Robert Tisch, has presented the world's most acclaimed classical musicians like Janos Starker, Emmanuel Pahud and the Tokyo String Quartet. The Center is also well known for its jazz series, curated by jazz great Dick Hyman, and its Lyrics & Lyricists series, the grandfather of the now popular American songbook series. The Center's legendary Unterberg Poetry Center (estab. 1939) presents the country's oldest and most illustrious reading series and an extensive writing program that gives working adults the opportunity to learn from well-known, published authors. Outreach activities include a literacy program for new immigrants and workshops for high school students taught by some of the country's leading writers. |
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| The 92nd Street Y unites culture and community service in one multifaceted institution. Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the Y is dedicated to enriching the lives of the 300,000 people of every race and faith who annually visit its three facilities — the well-known headquarters on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Makor, on the Upper West Side, and the Rockland County campgrounds. Visitors come to the 92nd Street Y to hear music of all kinds; to listen to writers read from their work; to explore Jewish culture; and to gain insight into the events and ideas of the day from public figures and experts in every field. Programs for children and adults help both groups navigate each stage of life, an extensive adult-education curriculum includes instruction by renowned authors and artists, and an unusual wellness initiative offers both a wide range of fitness activities and the opportunity to learn from the nation's leading healthcare professionals. Committed to sharing its programs with all New Yorkers regardless of economic circumstance, the 92nd Street Y provides $1 million in scholarships every year and reaches out to 6,000 public school children with fully-subsidized arts programs. For more information, visit
www.92Y.org/press. |
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© 2009 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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