Klezmer concerts and other jewish music
Shtetl Band Amsterdam is available for international tours and for performances at just one festival, stage or venue.For concerts the band offers a number of programs.
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"THE BRIDE'S WALTZ" - Village Klezmer
Village Klezmer is expressive music from the rich culture of the Jewish shtetls, almost swept away, thought to have vanished, and now, in the 21st century, fully back again. In the program "The Bride's Waltz" Shtetl Band Amsterdam revitalizes this village music in a refreshing way, with music for listening and for dancing, with happiness that is not worked up, with sadness that is not schmaltzy. The festive mood and the energy of the music make the audience feel like being at a Jewish wedding. The musicians casually explain about the melodies.
The klezmer sound produced by large ensembles with many wind players is well-known. But for centuries a different klezmer sound predominated in Eastern Europan Jewish folk music. It was a small-town, small-band sound. Having the violin's melody as its basis, this group sound is mild, rich and nuanced. Groups and musicians like Budowitz, Di Naye Kapelye, Alicia Svigals and Veretski Pass have brought this older sound back into its own place in the klezmer spectrum, and now place it on the concert stage. In its short life Shtetl Band Amsterdam has also become an inspired and much in-demand exponent of this Village Klezmer style. The musicians found instruments that match the sound of a village orchestra: smaller accordion and bass, a bass drum with an attached cymbal (poyk), a horn violin.
The program The Bride's Waltz is named after a klezmer waltz that was composed near the end of the 19th century by the Judaized gipsy fiddler Petru Zigeuner from Bessarabia. The waltz was possibly meant to be played at the party for the bride, the night before her wedding. Furthermore the program contains some well-known klezmer tunes, here played with a village sound, old melodies that were never recorded, and a few brand new compositions by Gregor Schaefer.A program with buzzing and bouncing klezmer music right from the heart.
The accompanying CD "The Bride's Waltz" was released April 2008 on Chamsa Records.
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"DOS LID FUN SHTETL" - Yiddish songs and Village klezmer music reunited
During the past centuries many songs have been composed in Yiddish, the vernacular of the Jews in Eastern Europe. The repertoire is very rich and varied: village songs about love, life and death, theater songs about family and society. In these songs one finds the whole emotional spectrum from deeply sad to exuberantly happy, enriched with that special sound of Jewish music.
For this program renowned singer Lucette van den Berg from the Netherlands joins Shtetl Band Amsterdam. For the very first time in many decades these Yiddish songs are reunited with the old village sound. Two styles that once were part of the same culture and later grew apart, are reunited again in this concert. -
"KLEZMORIM UN KHASIDIM" - Klezmer and Hasidic music
Klezmer music's full nephew is Hasidic (or Hassidic, Chasidic, Chassidic) music. Originally these were melodies withouts lyrics, to be song or hummed. They were composed by rabbis in Eastern Europe to reach higher levels of religious experience together with the faithful. There was a lot of dancing going on together with singing these melodies, it was (and still is) a festive way to experience one's religion. These Hasidic melodies are related to the melodies of klezmer music, they blend in easily when played on our instruments. In this program Shtetl Band Amsterdam shows music of both these branches of Jewish culture. -
"JEWISH MUSIC NORTH AND SOUTH" - Klezmer and Sephardic music
In Eastern Europe, klezmer music originated when the original music of the Ashkenazic Jews absorbed aspects of the local music. In medieval Spain and Portugal, Sephardic music started in the same way. An amalgam of Jewish, Arabic and Iberian sound can be heard in this music genre, that nowadays lives on in the Balkan countries, Turkey and the USA. In this program Shtetl Band Amsterdam plays klezmer music as well as Sephardic music, using instruments that are typical to the style, such as the ud (oriental lute) and darbuka (goblet shaped hand drum). Upon request a singer is added to the band, so that the lyrics can be heard in Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Jews.