music – Page 2 – From Under the Fig Tree

Calling all culture mavens

joselitNovember 12, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In the wake of the seemingly dire Pew Research Center study, the American Jewish establishment might be at a loss -- not for words, surely, but for ideas -- on how best to respond. Take heart. You needn’t go too far afield in search of reassurance and with it, heartening new forms of collective engagement. All you have to do is to visit Princeton next week, Columbia University in mid-January and the Skirball in Los Angeles a few months later. Pitch a tent in each one of these venues and you’ll encounter a dazzling round of Jewish cultural activities that is sure to lift your spirits.

Fiddler on the roof gives an impromptu concert in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC — Fiddler on the roof gives impromptu concert in Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C. Flickr/Adam Fagen

This coming Friday, Princeton -- yes, you’ve read that correctly -- will play host to a one day symposium, “Fiddler at 50,” that takes the measure of what Alisa Solomon, the author of the must-read, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, calls the most culturally insistent of theatrical productions. Drawing a mix of veteran theater-folk, including the redoubtable Sheldon Harnick, scholars like Solomon as well as the newest generation of Fiddler fans -- Princeton undergrads -- the event promises to enliven our understanding of one of American Jewry’s most enduring cultural milestones.

A few weeks later, Columbia will play host to a free, intensive and immersive one-week long workshop devoted to another one of American Jewry’s cultural touchstones: comics. The handiwork of Tent: Encounters with Jewish Culture, a recent initiative of the Yiddish Book Center, this confab offers a whirlwind of activities designed to send American Jewish twenty-somethings with a keen interest in comics into orbit -- and, when down on earth, in contact with one another.

Meanwhile, those who fancy themselves foodies, foodie-entrepreneurs or just good eaters should flock to Los Angeles in March for Tent: Food LA, yet another free, intensive and immersive one week-long workshop. This one brings together chefs, food writers and those with a hearty appetite for conversation and an abiding interest in Jewish cookery, then & now.

In each instance, as tradition crosses paths with modernity, the results are likely to be as inspiring -- and as surprising -- as fiddlers perched atop the roofs of Broadway.

Let’s face the music

joselitMarch 7, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Meteorologists thundered and the skies glowered as a major snowstorm loomed large on the horizon, threatening to thin the ranks of the audience for Zalmen Mlotek’s concert, “One Hundred Years of Yiddish Music,” which took place earlier this week at the DC-JCC.

Happily, music trumped meteorology. Showing their support for and interest in the sounds and sensibility of Yiddish, people -- some of them even wielding canes -- came out in force.

Their efforts were rewarded by a concert that not only showcased Zalmen Mlotek’s artistry and that of his special guest, Cantor Arianne Brown of Congregation Adas Israel, whose filigreed rendition of that old chestnut, Mein Yidishe Mame had the audience in tears. It also underscored the ways in which music constitutes community.

These days, we’re apt to think that the best way to engage with music is to listen to its rhythms within the confines of our own personal, digitally-enhanced space. I don’t disagree. But going by my experience, and that of my seatmates, at Mr. Mlotek’s performance the other evening, there’s something to be said for listening within the company of others.

For a few hours on a wintry Tuesday, it offered a form of communion with history and sentiment and, above all, with one another, that is increasingly hard to find.

Music man

joselitFebruary 24, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

For some of us, Yiddish is the language of loss. For others, it’s the language of punch lines, a comic, even raunchy, bit of business. But most of us, I suspect, are inclined to see Yiddish as a language of fragments, of bits and pieces left over from a now-vanished world.

If you’re able to make it to the DC-JCC on Tuesday evening, March 5th, at 7 p.m., when Zalmen Mlotek and his special guest, Cantor Arianne Brown, will be performing, you’ll encounter a Yiddish that is full-bodied, robust and, preeminently, a language of song.

Thanks to the artistry and dedication of Mr. Mlotek, a celebrated composer, music director and consultant as well as the Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene, America’s oldest and only continuously running Yiddish theater troupe, a new generation of American Jews now has the opportunity to familiarize itself with the sounds -- and sensibility -- of what had once been the lingua franca of Ashkenazic Jewry.

Mr. Mlotek’s forthcoming concert, “One Hundred Years of Yiddish Theater Music,” which has been made possible by the DC-JCC and the generous support of the David D. and Betty Cooper Wallerstein Fund for Judaic Studies at GW, will range widely over, and expose us to, the varied musical genres that the Yiddish theater world made its own.

Moving from the patter of Gilbert & Sullivan to the jazzy inflections of George Gershwin, “One Hundred Years of Yiddish Theater Music” will not only leave us hungry for more. It will also free us of many of our preconceptions.