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Klezmer in the Park bands
Bandstand Programme (click on names for more details)
Click here to return to the 2011 programme.
Max Reinhardt
DJ, broadcaster and Festival curator introduces the UK’s leading Klezmer bands, performers of ‘Klezmer has Talent’, and guest celebrities.
1.00pm
Vivi Lachs and Klezmer Klub
Klezmer from London’s East End
2.00pm
Daphna Sadeh and the Voyagers
Middle Eastern and Mediterranean sounds
3.00pm
Polina Skovoroda and Fanfara
Rumanian brass with amazing singer
4.00pm
She'koyokh
Klezmer with Balkan infusions
In the breaks
Rumplestiltstein
Klezmer from on high!
All afternoon
- Dance callers Andreas Schmitges coming from Europe, as well as Ilana Cravitz and Guy Schalom of Hopkele productions, lead you in circle and line dances
- Displays about Jewish Culture activities in London
- Exhibition 3 ½ centuries of Jewish life in Britain from the Jewish Museum
- Free activities for children with Stephen Melzack
- Klezmer on stilts
- CDs, music books and Jewish articles for sale
- Kosher food for sale
Programme will be published in Jewish News – get your free copy.
Children’s Activities:
Bring your children (and supervise them) for Children’s activities in the Culture tent.
1.00pm – 3.00pm Join the JCC in the marqueefor some exciting children’s activities.
Create some funny sounds by making instruments out of vegetables – and show your
artistic side by designing Rosh Hashanah cards for friends and family. For more
information on our year-round children’s events visit www.jcclondon.org.uk
3.00pm – 4.00pm Stephen Melzack will teach children a song to sing on the bandstand
All afternoon: balloon figures and face painting presented by Jewish News and Media Group
Max is one of the regular presenters on that voyage into uncharted waters that is Radio 3's Late Junction. He has been known to crop up on the BBC World Service intermittently, also as music consultant/co-scriptwriter on Radio 2's South African music series Freedom Sounds, and has featured in a Radio 4 documentary on his theatre piece 'Ketubah'.
Max is musical director/composer at the 'Oily Cart'. Established in 1981, Oily Cart works entirely with children, many with complex disabilities, and often in special schools.
"Where Oily Cart has gone before, mainstream theatre for adults often follows a couple of years later." (Lyn Gardner, in The Guardian.)
In summer 2009 Max curated the huge Late Night Radio Event at Tate Britain and he's currently working on a commission for the 2010 Spitalfields Festival.
With Rita Ray, he's put together a host of innovative club nights in the UK and internationally like The Shrine and before that The Mambo Inn, and with Rita shares Artistic Directorship of several music festivals including Celebrating Sanctuary.
His creative partnership with Rita extends to performance of music and the spoken word. Rita and Max act as curators and consultants with a number of venues and other festivals as well as tour internationally as the band 'Shrine Synchro System'.
Max also curates and performs as musician and DJ at 'Radio Gagarin', a regular London–based club night come mini-festival.
Click here to return to the 2011 programme.
Vivi Lachs and Klezmer Klub (1.00pm)
Klezmer from London’s East End
Klezmer Klub started in 1989 when Tim Israel got together with Gabriel Ellenberg and Adina Presman to play through some klezmer tunes. Wanting the sound of a full klezmer band, they invited some of their friends to join them, and so Klezmer Klub was born. Klezmer is, at its heart, dance music, wedding music, both wild and tender. Played by the Klezmorim as they tramped the roads of eastern Europe it is a music that gets to your heart by way of your feet. Often described as bitter-sweet, it came out of poverty and oppression. Both dances and song contain joy, exhilaration and wit alongside the sadness, anger and defiance.
Freylekhs, bulgars, horas, hongas, sers – these are thumping dance tunes that would have been played at 'simkhes' (celebrations) in Eastern European 'shtetls' (Jewish villages) for hundreds of years. Whilst respecting the tradition, the bitter-sweet sound that is klezmer, we bring them to life from our own perspective of modern day life in London, with all the inter-cultural mixing that goes with it.
The songs are sung in Yiddish, the language of the Jews in Eastern Europe. Vivi Lachs, our singer, has collected her own unique repertoire of songs, which cover a wide variety of themes: love songs, political anthems and union songs, music hall comedy, songs from film and theatre, and songs about working class life in London’s Leicester Square, Whitechapel and Victoria Park. A great performer, Vivi animates them all with explanations, costume and character.Not long into the life of Klezmer Klub we forged a (still ongoing) long-term relationship with the liberal Jewish community Beit Klal Yisrael. The BKY Rabbi, Sheila Shulman, has become a true friend of the band. In 1998 she wrote the following words for the liner notes of our first CD:
"For about eight years the Klezmer Klub have been at the heart of our community celebrations. getting people on their feet dancing with the scrolls on Simchat Torah, or at weddings, or at community parties. They were always good, but over the years they’ve become stronger, ever more exuberant, more musically sophisticated. They are bursting at the seams with a kind of generosity of heart, with true klezmer wildness. Their music is altogether a delight to the soul (and to the feet)." Rabbi Sheila Shulman – Beit Klal Yisrael.
Click here to return to the 2011 programme.
Daphna Sadeh and the Voyagers (2.00pm)
Daphna Sadeh is a composer and Double Bass player, born in Israel and currently living in the UK.
Her new CD,Reconciliation is released on Tzadik label in New York www.tzadik.com . Daphna Sadeh and The Voyagers produce a distinctive style of music that crosses the boundaries of Mediterranean Sephardic, Arabic with Jewish, Jazz with tradition, and Jewish with Eastern European Ashkenazi. Spice this up with the rhythmic excitement of the Klezmer groove
and you'll hear a truly amazing sound. Daphna performed internationally
and recorded with various World Music groups such
as East West Ensemble and Eve's Women. She
performed in the USA, Asia, Europe and South
Africa in different festivals and venues.
She previously released two CD's - Walking The Thin Line in 2007 and Out of Border, released in 2002.
Click here to return to the 2011 programme.
Polina Skovoroda and Fanfara (3.00pm)
Under the guest direction of Jewish virtuoso vocalist Polina Skovoroda, the wild East European Roma brass band, Fanfara, present traditional, revolutionary and songs of celebration inYiddish. 
Born in Siberia, Russia, Polina (now Shepherd) learned music first from her grandfather, a button accordionist, and her mother, a singer. She soon became her mother’s accompanist playing the dark theatres of Tatarstan to wildly responsive audiences. Singing in Russian and Yiddish she has composed and arranged material which she has recorded solo, with bands, emselbles and choirs from many parts of the world. Based in Brighton, Fanfara formed in 2003. Members have performed at Guca, Serbia, and Borneo Rainforest Music Festivals, at Carnival in Cuba, Sydney Opera House, Royal Festival and Queen Elizabeth Halls in London, Luxembourg Philharmonie and Lucerne Concert Hall, amongst other prestigious venues.
http://www.myspace.com/polifan
http://www.polinashepherd.co.uk/fanfara.html
New videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uEKMlYR-vU
She'koyokh Klezmer Ensemble (4.00pm)
Award-winning klezmer with Balkan infusions
Meg Hamilton – violin
Susi Evans - clarinet
Matt Bacon – guitar
Oliver Baldwin – double bass
Vasilis Sarkis – percussion
Ben Samuels – mandolin
Paul Tkachenko - accordion/vocals
Cigdem Aslan - vocals
Established in 2001 with the support of a JMI Millennium Award, She’Koyokh’s evolution has spanned busking on London’s streets to performing on the global stage, winning the International Jewish Music Festival competition in the Netherlands in 2008. Renowned for “musicianship, precision and general joie de vivre” (The Herald), this innovative band is inspired by the confluence of Eastern Europe’s musical cultures and traditions performing an exceptionally diverse repertoire of exhilarating and soulful, Jewish, Gypsy and Balkan music, original compositions and exhilarating solos.
"Inspirational" The Guardian
Click here to return to the 2011 programme.
Rumplestiltstein (In the breaks)
Rumpelstiltstein are the klezmer alter-egos of Brighton-based stilt walking band The Top Bananas. They have travelled the world with their towering performances and will create a strolling shtetl-style simcha ...
Ilana and Guy lead Yiddish circle and line dances and help you dance your socks off to the best UK klezmer bands. No Yiddish dance experience necessary - they'll show you how! Hopkele Productions Ltd holds regular Jewish dance events with a twist - the phenomenon known as the KLEZMER KEILIDH.
Andreas Schmitges works as a teacher for Yiddish Dance at Festivals in London, Kiev, Odessa and Weimar and has given concerts, dance and Klezmer-workshops at festivals of Jewish and Yiddish culture in Europe including London, Amsterdam, Enschede, Berlin, Munich, Gelsenkirchen and Weimar.
‘They got the crowd going’ The Jewish Chronicle
Stephen is an international award winning Singer/Songwriter and Performer.
One of his projects is “Two Candles Burn" - an exciting concept in new and original songs composed and performed by him aimed at introducing children of all ages to the Jewish Festivals. Available on CD they are being used by Schools throughout the country to help teach Judaism.
His composition “This Land” has won two song writing competitions-
an International Jewish song competition held in Canada beating over 300 entries worldwide and the “Song for Israel 2008”
Stephen regularly performs in cabaret, concerts and workshops.
Visit www.twocandles.com