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December 29, 2007
A Wee Bit o' Klezmer from Scotland
I've been listening to a klezmer CD that came my way lately, and I like it. "Zing!" by the Yiddish Song Project combines some original tunes, such as "Chicken Soup Freylekhs - A Love Song" with classics like "Bay Mir Bist Du Sheyn" and repositioned jazz numbers like "Whoopee."
YSP is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, the personnel is Stephanie Brickman (vocals), Phil Alexander (piano and accordian), and Jo Nicholson (clarinet). Brickman has a great, clear voice, just right for Yiddish song stylings.
I asked Brickman about the group, which started playing around Hanukkah 2006. She said in an email,
We play a broad spectrum of Yiddish song with a few klezmer numbers thrown in. We set out with the intention of bringing the beauty of Yiddish song to new audiences. I was never very sure of which era I would settle on and I now don't think I could choose. So we do some folky/traditional stuff, musical theatre and some Yiddish jazz.We also create new music in Yiddish. I'm the only one who speaks Yiddish in the band, although the other two are picking a lot up. I am lucky to have a lot of support from my Yiddish teacher who spends a lot of
time trying to iron out the wrinkles in my accent. For the new stuff I've mostly taken poems and set them to music. I get a lot of inspiration for the tunes from the liturgy at shul. There are some great tunes.
It's Orthodox so it isn't appropriate for me to sing them too loudly and the choir is obviously men only, but interestingly that's led me to use them elsewhere. The exception to this is the Chicken Soup Freylakhs. This song was more compiled than written, I sat down with all my Jewish cookbooks and put together the lyrics.My musical influences are really Chava Alberstein, the Barry Sisters and Molly Picon, for the band as a whole I think the Klezmatics and Dave Tarras feature pretty strongly.
So if you're looking for something upbeat for your New Year's Eve blowout, give a listen to the Yiddish Song Project. It'll get your tuchus moving.
Van | 12/29/07 at 09:39 PM | Categories: Doing Jewish
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Comments
Good music !!!
Paul | December 30, 2007 06:54 PM
