|
Shalom Comrade! Extended CD booklet text now available: Shalom Comrade
New Joel Rubin CD available January 15, 2007:
Midnight Prayer
Announcing the release of the new CD, "Midnight Prayer" by the Joel Rubin Ensemble. Clarinetist Rubin has long been considered to be one of the leading performers of Jewish instrumental klezmer music in the world today, earning accolades from sources as diverse as klezmer giants Dave Tarras and Max Epstein, international clarinet soloist Richard Stoltzman, avant garde composer John Zorn, and Nobel Prize Laureate and poet Roald Hoffmann. The ensemble also features Hungarian cimbalom virtuoso Kálmán Balogh, Italian accordion wizard Claudio Jacomucci and rising klezmer star violinist David Chernyavsky, as well as Ferenc Kovács (trumpet), Csaba Novák (bass), Sándor Budai (second violin) and Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl).
Midnight Prayer brings together two diverse, yet partially overlapping repertoires: the instrumental music of the klezmorim -- the professional Jewish instrumentalists who graced every traditional Jewish wedding in Eastern Europe from at least the 16th century onwards -- and the mystical nigunim (religious melodies of spiritual elevation) of the hasidic movement. Recorded in four magical days at the Operetta House in Budapest, Hungary, Midnight Prayer creates its own sonic universe, full of depth, virtuosity, playfulness and introspection. The kaleidoscopic soundscape filters the many historical layers of traditional Jewish music through the lenses of the multifarious musical backgrounds of the band's members, ranging from classical to Gypsy to free jazz to contemporary art music. Here the interaction of a great improvising jazz ensemble melds with the delicacy of a chamber music group and the drive of a hot wedding band at the cusp of klezmer, Roma and other Eastern European traditions.
To order:
Traditional Crossroads
Hear Joel Rubin on With Good Reason (broadcast Dec. 16th-22nd, 2006):
Residency Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble
University of Virginia, February 4-6, 2007:
Concert of Klezmer music, Gypsy music and Jazz
Violin recital David Chernyavsky with Michael Adcock
Upcoming concerts Joel Rubin Ensemble
featuring Kalman Balogh, Ferenc Kovacs and David Chernyavsky
Celebrating the release of the new CD "Midnight Prayer" on
Feb 7: Makor, New York City (W. 67th St.)
Further details TBA
University of Virginia Klezmer Ensemble Premier Concert
March 22, 2007
August, 2006: new position and contact information Joel Rubin
Assistant Professor
Rubin named National Arts Associate of
Sigma Alpha Iota (December 2005):
Joel Rubin has been honored with a Distinguished Membership in Sigma Alpha Iota, the national music fraternity, as a National Arts Associate.
Forthcoming performances:
Announcing the release of "Shalom Comrade!"
"Shalom Comrade!: Yiddish Music in the Soviet Union 1928-1961"
(Schott Wergo SM 1627-2) , the 10th production in the Jewish Music Series of CDs edited by ethnomusicologists Joel Rubin and Rita Ottens has been available since November 2005. It is distributed in the US by
Harmonia Mundi USA.
The anthology "Shalom Comrade" tells the history of Yiddish music in the Soviet Union via rare recordings from the archive of Ottens and Rubin. This carefully edited production documents the enormous variety of Yiddish music performed in the Soviet Union, from rollicking klezmer dance tunes to the interwar Polish-Jewish cabaret songs of the Galician troubadour Mordkhe Gebirtig, 19th century Yiddish folk songs, music of the Soviet Yiddish theatre, to art songs with revolutionary texts by composers such as Samuil Polonskii, Lev Pul'ver, Vladimir Shainskii and Moses Mil'ner, and texts by the poets B. Bergol'ts and Iosif Kerler. Rubin and Ottens' 40-page booklet in English and German includes a detailed essay about the political-ideological impact on Yiddish language, culture and music and -- in the final analysis -- on Jewish life in the Soviet Union.
Yiddish music played an important role in the cultural and political life of the Soviet Union's several million Jews throughout the 74 years of communist rule. Stalin's cultural ideologues planned to deploy the music of the Yiddish-speaking Jews as a building block for the new Soviet music; at the same time, the "outmoded" Jewish religion and its traditional way of life was being branded as counter-revolutionary in show trials. The recording of Jewish music in the Soviet Union was limited, with only 100-150 78 rpm discs released from 1917-1967. The importance of artists like Solomon Mikhoels and Nechama Lifshitsaite was immense for the Jews of the Soviet Union: celebrities of international significance, they were as well known for their roles as political figureheads as they were for their performances.
"Shalom Comrade" features some of the great performers of the Soviet and world stage: Misha Aleksandrovich, Sof'ia Druker, Mikhail Epel'baum, Solomon Fayntukh, Sara Fibikh, Marina "Masha" Gordon, Emil' Gorovets, Anna Guzik, Irma Iaunzem, Solomon Khromchenko, Nechama Lifshitsaite, Saul Liubimov, Solomon Mikhoels, the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre, Debora Pantofel'-Nechetskaia, M. I. Rabinovich, Zinovii Shul'man, Sidi Tal', Tatiana Vayntraub, and Klara Vaga.
Recent and forthcoming articles by Rita Ottens:
"Die wüste Stadt Berlin": Ein Versuch zur Standortbestimmung jiddischer Musik unter den jüdischen Zuwanderern aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion in Berlin (The Desolate City Berlin: An attempt to determine the position of Yiddish music among Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union), in: Jüdische Musik und ihre Musiker im 20. Jahrhundert (Jewish Music and Its Musicians in the 20th Century, ed. Wolfgang Birtel, Joseph Dorfman and Christoph-Hellmut Mahling. Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft (Musicological Writings; Musicology Institute of the University of Mainz). Mainz: ARE Musikverlag (2006).
"Ich möchte stolz sein auf die Kunst meines Volkes": Die jüdische Sängerin Marina Gordon."
Fran¨ois Lilienfeld, Review, Lomir ale singn: Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas. Zuerich: Chronos, 2002, in: Shofar (Journal of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association, the Western Jewish Studies Association, and the Jewish Studies Program of Purdue University), Vol. 22, Issue 4, Summer 2004: 173-176.
"'The Sounds of the Vanishing World':
The article was originally presented
Recent and forthcoming articles by Joel E. Rubin:
Heyser Bulgar (The Spirited Bulgar): Compositional process in Jewish-American dance music of the 1910s and 1920s, in: Jüdische Musik und ihre Musiker im 20. Jahrhundert (Jewish Music and Its Musicians in the 20th Century), ed. Wolfgang Birtel, Joseph Dorfman and Christoph-Hellmut Mahling. Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft (Musicological Writings; Musicology Institute of the University of Mainz). Mainz: ARE Musikverlag (2006).
CD reviews of "The Western Sephardi Liturgical Tradition As Sung by Abraham Lopes Cardozo", "The Hasidic Niggun As Sung by the Hasidim", and "Oh, Lovely Parrot! Jewish Women's Songs from Kerala". Yearbook for Traditional Music vol. 38 (2006): 142-43.
Review essay "Music is the Pen of the Soul": Recent Works on Hasidic and Jewish Instrumental Klezmer Music, in: AJS Review 29:1, Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies, 2005: 145-158.
Article: "Jewish diaspora" in the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, ed. John Shepherd et al., London: Continuum (volume VII: Europe, 2005): 74-92.
Book review Georg Winkler
Ambivalente Indentitaeten: Die amerikanische Klezmer-Bewegung als Reaktion auf Krise and Trauma (Ambivalent Identities: The American Klezmer Movement as a Reaction to Crisis and Trauma), in: Berichte aus dem ICTM-Nationalkomitee Deutschland XIII: Traditionelle Musik und Mode(n) - Freie Berichte (Proceedings of the ICTM German National Committee XIII: Traditional Music and Mode(s) - Reports), ed. Marianne Broecker, Bamberg: Universitaetsbibliothek, 2004: 89-115.
"Im Zentrum eines alten Rituals": Die Klarinette in der Klezmer-Musik ("In the midst of an ancient ritual": The Clarinet in Klezmer Music); chapter for the catalog to the exhibition "Faszination Klarinette" celebrating the 300th anniversary of the invention of the clarinet. Munich/Berlin: Prestel Verlag/Musikinstrumenten-Museum/Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 2004: 219-230.
Follow the link to the gallery in
Print Publications for downloadable versions of other articles by Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin, including excerpts from the books
"Klezmer-Musik" and "Jüdische Musiktraditionen".
last updated on March 12, 2007 |