Zalmen Mlotek – From Under the Fig Tree

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.

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.

Tag: Zalmen Mlotek

Let’s face the music

Music man