Brooklyn cantorial concert a milestone for new Barclays Center

Who knew the man behind the Brooklyn homecomings of Jay-Z and Barbra Streisand had a thing for heimische melodies?

Bruce Ratner, the developer and majority owner of the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn, which opened last September with a Jay-Z show and hosted borough native Streisand a month later, holds a special place in his heart for cantorial music.

“My parents are both from Eastern European descent, so that type of Jewish music is in my blood,” Ratner told JTA. “I grew up going to my Conservative synagogue in Cleveland, where they had an amazing cantor who I absolutely loved to listen to. And as I got older, I was always buying cantor CDs. The music is just so refined.”
Ratner, the chairman and chief executive of the real estate development firm Forest City Ratner Companies, is taking personal pride in having spearheaded efforts to put on the first Jewish event at the venue: a Feb. 28 concert featuring the renowned Israeli-born violinist Itzhak Perlman sharing the stage with Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot. The Barclays performance comes on the heels of the pair's recent collaboration, “Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul,” an album of Jewish music released in August.

In an age where klezmer music has gained a following in the downtown jazz scene and Yiddish culture has experienced something of a revival, Ratner is optimistic that between Brooklyn's hipsters and Chasidim, the show will find an audience.

“I know not everyone listens to cantorial music today, but if they really listen, they’ll find such a history behind it,” said Ratner, who became acquainted with Perlman 30 years ago when their daughters attended private school together in Manhattan. “Growing up, cantors used to be treated like rock stars, and I think kids today unfamiliar with it will really find this concert enjoyable.”

A century ago, it was hardly uncommon for Jewish cantors to perform at venues like Barclays. Cantors such as Yossele Rosenblatt and Zeidel Rovener were mainstream stars, recording popular records and gracing the stages of Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall.
Only about a third of Barclays' 19,000 seats are going to be made available for the Perlman-Helfgot show, but it's still likely to be one of the largest cantorial concerts in the United States in nearly a century.

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What is Jewish Music?

Jewish music stems from ancient prayer chants of the Levant some 3000 years ago. The musical notation that developed and that we find in the bible today is one of the most ancient forms of notated music, and yet it is still in current practice all over the world today. Jewish music has been constantly adapting to new conditions and yet retaining its identity in many widely differing ethnic, social and religious environments.

Through its daughter religions, the music of Judaism is one of the fundamental elements in the understanding of the sacred and secular traditions of Europe and the Near East, first having influenced, and then having been influenced by, the music of Christian and Islamic cultures. The study of Jewish music encompasses many genres of religious, semi religious and folk music used in the synagogue and in the Jewish home and also art music using Jewish texts or themes. The study of Jewish music combines distinctively, the essential elements of musicology, ethnomusicology and interculturalism. Jewish music today encompasses a wide diversity of musical traditions and Jewish songs are sung in many different languages.
Ashkenazi Music (Klezmer)

Ashkenazi refers to the Jews who settled in the Rhineland of South West Germany and Northern France from about the third century CE. They developed a distinct culture and spread out eastwards through Central Europe into Slavic lands. Ashkenazi cantorial song reached a very high level of sophistication and ornamentation. The vernacular language was Yiddish, based on medieval German with Slavic and Hebrew words and written in Hebrew script. Yiddish language influenced their popular music. Yiddish language and music travelled with Ashkenazi Jews as they moved to the new world. A musician was called a klezmer.

The term Klezmer comes from the Hebrew words klei meaning “vessel” and zemer meaning “song” - literally meaning “instrument of song.” This was the Yiddish word by which the musicians themselves were known in Eastern Europe. The term “Klezmer Music” was first used in the 1970s to describe the traditional instrumental music of the Yiddish-speaking people of Eastern Europe whose origins can be traced back to the Middle Ages.

Klezmer is enjoying huge popularity world wide and giving pleasure to thousands of listeners and performers. This toe-tapping Eastern European party music imbued with Jewish tonalities and spirituality resonates with people young and old from a wide variety of backgrounds.

For a selection of Ashkenazi/Klezmer music - CLICK HERE 

Avishai Cohen (the trumpeter, not the bassist)

In the vibrant and tight-knit world of jazz music, there is only one Miles Davis, one Ella Fitzgerald, and one Wynton Marsalis. But there are two Avishai Cohens, both of them successful, and both of them Israeli. Fortunately, they play different instruments: one Cohen's on the trumpet, the other sticks to bass. It's the trumpeter who's now enjoying his turn in the international spotlight.

The trumpeting Cohen leads a post-bop trio called Triveni, with bassist Omer Avital and drummer Nasheet Watts. Their unusually piano-less numbers range from soft and bluesy to fiery and Dizzy Gillespie-ish.

In late 2012, the trio released its second CD, Triveni II. All About Jazz called it a "stunning" work by a band whose music is "off-the-wall without veering completely off the tracks." The Jazz Chill Corner wrote that "the quick-time improvisation of the trio is brilliant." And Downbeat named Cohen a rising star in its 2012 critics poll.

Born in Tel Aviv but living in New York, Cohen sometimes performs with his brother Yuval (sax) and sister Anat (clarinet) in a band called The 3 Cohens – the swinging-est siblings in the jazz world today (with apologies to Wynton and the boys).  Avishai Cohen (the trumpeter, not the bassist)

Klezmer in Jerusalem

O, Jerusalem! Jewish culture capital of the world, where klezmer music wafts through the air like simmering cholent…Right? Well, not exactly. In a city teeming with even more Russian than Yiddish, and where shopping malls attract more visitors than music venues, there’s only one place to experience klezmer performed by musicians who look and sound as if they’ve just stepped out of the shtetl: Kool Klezmer, the weekly post-Shabbat jam session held in the book-lined offices of the Yung YiDish cultural organization.

Led by the gregarious clarinetist and accordion player Avraham Burshtein, many of the klezmorim arrive still wearing their Shabbat bekkishes, and sporting their beards and payot. The group fills the dimly lit basement on the edge of an ultra-orthodox neighborhood with hours of lively Eastern European tunes, spontaneous dancing, and Yiddish tales. And their music hits you right in the kishkes.
Kool Klezmer attracts an eclectic assortment of people—both Haredim and secular Jews alike—who gather to enjoy the organized musical chaos as well as the antics of Burshtein, who in addition to leading this talented group of klezmorim, also happens to be the best bottle dancer this side of Pinsk.

The Jazz Sound and Jewish Films

David Krakauer links the mediums

“New York is the jazz capital of the world!” yelled out the enthused emcee at Le Poisson Rouge, at one point, this Saturday night. And it really felt like it, too: according to the organizers of this year’s Winter JazzFest that included dozens of bands in six venues across New York’s Greenwich Village, the event was completely sold out. Block-long crowds piled outside of each venue, and Le Poisson Rouge, the festival’s main stage, was jam-packed from early on in the night, which is when David Krakauer’s “Big Picture” project took stage.

David Krakauer is major clarinetist: although world-renown for his klezmer chops, he’s brought his sound into worlds as diverse as funk, classical music, and avant-garde jazz. The newest project, however, is not a genre exploration, but a conceptual one. “Big Picture” is about reinterpretation of American film music–some of the most poignant tunes, played behind the screen. More often than not, caught up in a film’s narrative, we do not even notice these melodies, as they surface on the background and fade out. And yet they have a major effect on us–amplifying our emotions, refocusing and guiding our attention. It is that very emotional-laden memory that Krakauer’s sound taps into–the vague but potent recollection of how we felt watching films he’s borrowed melodies from: “The Pianist”, “Lenny”, “Sophie’s Choice”, and “Life is Beautiful” among others.

To me, the point was brought home most explicitly when the band went into “Body & Soul,” as a tribute to Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”. The melody is familiar to anyone with even a cursory interest in jazz: it has been covered by such giants as Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaugham. Yet, riffing on Benny Goodman’s version that Woody Allen uses in his film, Krakauer brought to the stage, the very quintessence of what a classic Woody Allen movie feels and sounds like. Sure, we all laugh at Woody’s self-deprecating, neurotic quips (and as per Woody’s opinion piece in this weekend’s Times), the neuroticism is still going strong), but what makes his films so memorable is a certain magical, romantic, anything-is-possible-and-yet sort of an attitude that those vintage jazz tracks bring to us, from the background.

Krakauer closed the set with a song, which, he announced “you can all help us with, I’m sure”. It was none other than “Tradition” from “Fiddler on the Roof”, which, indeed, the crowd shouted along to, on band’s cue. Indeed, the jazz capital of the world – and the capital of a few other things, too. 

Mazel Tov, K-Pop

Just a few months ago, Korean pop star Psy’s smash hit “Gangnam Style” launched K- pop into the global limelight. But years before “Gangnam Style,” K-pop was already rearing its head in the Jewish world thanks to the boy band ZE:A’s single “Mazel tov!”.

The rhythms of ZE:A’s song are irresistible, and may inspire you to join the boys and start dancing. “Mazel tov!” they repeatedly exclaim. “Mazel tov!”

What exactly is ZE:A celebrating? Well…we’re not quite sure. Let’s see if JpopAsia’s handy translation of the lyrics can explain:

Mazel tov have strength, Mazel tov smile,

Mazel tov, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Mazel tov, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

I hope you will at least give me some strength, my my my girl

ZE:A’s “Mazel tov!” is hardly Hebrew’s first pop cameo. Jay-Z shouted out to the Jews in his song “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is)…” with “Black bar mitzvahs / Mazel tov, it’s a celebration.” And in the Black Eyed Peas’ ”I Gotta Feeling,” listen for “Fill up my cup, mazel tov!”

There’s only one thing to say about the strange popularity of this Jewish phrase in pop music (sorry, it’s irresistible!): Mazel tov!

The Shondes: The Coney Island of Rock Bands?"

Coney Island — home of legendary knishes, Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs, and that historic roller coaster — is rich with Jewish spirit.

A similar thing could be said of the Brooklyn band The Shondes, who so identify with the oceanfront Brooklyn district that they recorded a paean to it for their album, "Searchlights." (Check out track 9, "Coney Island Tonight.") With their exuberant violin-driven rock ‘n roll, The Shondes have drawn comparisons to Sleater-Kinney, The Go-Gos, and Bruce Springsteen. And when the four band members take to the stage they're as powerful as a big ensemble.

The Shondes bring an ineffable Yiddish spirit to their tunes that goes deeper than just their name (which means "shame" in Yiddish, á la "It's a shonde for the goyim"). Maybe it's in Elijah Oberman's violin – the way it seems to weep and laugh all in the same breath. Or maybe it's in Louisa Solomon’s commanding lead vocals – so rich a voice it seems charged with the emotions of generations. Whatever the case, The Shondes are making breathtaking music made of deeply unexpected musical ingredients and even deeper heart.

The Shondes' Searchlights came out in 2011 and they're working on their next album.