Weimar So Far.....

We've had a changeover in Weimar from the Advanced Instrumental Workshop for a new one for Dance Teachers and Dance Musicians.  I'll sum up some thoughts on the conclusion of the Instrumental Workshop, and then talk about the beginning of this new workshop.

We finished up the first workshop with a road trip to Postdam to play a concert at an insanely big church for a conference on Jewish music in Germany.  Yes, I know. Jewish music in a ridiculously huge church. I get the irony. 

We played a very successful concert of very difficult music. . . Since the workshop was focused on non-dance genres of klezmer music, it was not the usual upbeat, peppy tunes an audience familiar with klezmer was used to.  And it was long.  Not only did our student ensembles play, but many of the faculty members performed as well.  All in all, it was a well played, very professional concert, considering that the student performances were all prepared within a week.

Personally, I played in Steve Greenman and Pete Rushevsky's ensemble, playing music written by the two of them, reflecting Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW)'s commitment to creating new music that reflects the influences of other musical genres, but also within the traditional styles. 

Unfortunately, this is the only picture of Steve or Pete that I have (this is Steve).  Since he's still around, I'll get a better one.

Our ensemble was an interesting mix, but rather representative of the instrumentation here.  Lots of clarinets, tons of violins, and a couple of tzimbls and accordions and basses.  In our group, among the students, we had 3 violins, 2 clarinets, and a tzimbl.  It really brought to the fore the challenges of creating an interesting arrangement with primarily melody instruments.  It's enough to say that all of the violinists played at least a little bit of an accompanying role, and the clarinets were given plenty of opportunity to lay out (not play) to make sure we didn't obliterate the violins and tzimbl.  We played some really beautiful songs, and if you catch KlezFactor in some upcoming shows, you might catch Steve's Gas Nign, which we're definitely going to have to play.

The new workshop is very different.  In an attempt to increase the communication between dancers and musicians, this workshop is designed to let members of each group know just what they would like to see and hear to be more responsive to one another.  I'll let you know how things go, but it looks like the different groups are still quite separate and are still trying to find that common ground.

I'll be following up this entry with another one on Linguistic Overload.  Until then!