KlezCalendar

This is a reminder that the next Jewish Music Forum event will take place on Friday, November 18. Dr. Walter Zev Feldman will be speaking about Jewish professional and communal musicians in 18th and 19th century Ottoman culture. Dr. Karl Signell, editor of Ethnomusicology OnLine (EOL) will respond. In conjunction with the seminar, a companion concert curated by Dr. Feldman, “Sabbatian Mysticism and Jewish Composers of the Ottoman Court,” featuring the Bezmara Ensemble from Istanbul, will be held on Thursday evening, November 17 at the 92nd Street Y. Information on both events follows.

Ethnomusicologist Walter Zev Feldman, Ph.D., an expert on Turkish and Jewish musical history, will present a lecture with audiovisual accompaniment on the history of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Ottoman Sephardic Jewish composers. Dr. Feldman is the author of numerous works on Ottoman musical history and the history of Jewish klezmer music. He is a co-editor of the Medimuses Project for Modal Musics of the Mediterranean for the EnChordais School in Thessaloniki, Greece. He recently co-produced the CD Tanburi Isak with the Bezmara Ensemble of Istanbul for EnChordais. In 2003 he curated the concert series “The Revival of Klezmer and Yiddish Music in New York” at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the artistic director of the current series “Shared Sacred Spaces: Music of the Mystics” at the 92nd Street Y.

While researching Turkish music in Istanbul, Karl Signell studied the ney (reed flute) with master musician Akagündüz Kutbay. His book on Turkish makam (mode), a standard reference in Turkish music studies, has been translated into Russian and Turkish. At the University of Maryland College Park, he directed graduate studies in ethnomusicology. Since 1995 Signell has edited the web journal Ethnomusicology OnLine (EOL).

The event is sponsored by the Jewish Music Forum as part of its 2005-2006 Seminar Series: New Perspectives on Music in Jewish Life. For information on this event please see the website: www.jewishmusicforum.org, call 212-294-8328.

The Jewish Music Forum is a project of the American Society for Jewish Music hosted at the Center for Jewish History with the support of the American Jewish Historical Society.