Klezmer Conquest: A Battle of the Bands, Needham, MA, 11 December 2011
KLEZMER CONQUEST: A Battle of The Bands
Temple Aliyah
1664 Central Ave-Needham, MA
December 11th at 7 PM
$ 5 ticket
Join our special guest MCs, our Natick neighbors, Cantor Ken Richmond and Rabbi Shira Shazeer for an entertaining evening of Klezmer as four local bands hit the Aliyah bandstand. Having performed klezmer and Yiddish songs up and down the East Coast, in Israel, and in Eastern Europe, Ken and Shira will keep the program moving with their musical taklents, Yiddishkeit, and humor..
Our four Klezmer Kontenders are:
Klezjam who have playing together for nearly 3 years. We play at nursing homes, assisted living centers, and an occasional bar mitzvah and wedding. The band got its name from the fact that we met playing at two regular jams -- the Workmen's Circle jam and the Watertown.jam.
JCC Klezmer ensemble is a class of The JCC in Newton lead by Barry Shapiro. Barry has been along-time member of the Boston music scene and was a founding member of The Klezmer Conservatory Band, Shirim, and the B.S.O. (Barry Shapiro Orchestra).
Shir Madness plays a mix of Yiddish show tunes, folk tunes and hits from the Borscht Belt. The band plays all of the distinctive dances and styles -- bulgars, Terkishes, freylakhs, horas, shers, hongas, waltzes and marches -- all of them popular in Eastern Europe and in the U.S. in the early part of the twentieth century. The band especially loves the wild and swinging music from the golden age of the great bandleaders -- people like Dave Tarras, Abe Schwartz, German Goldenshteyn, Harry Kandel, and Naftule Brandwein. We also play original pieces written by our clarinet player, Richard Yospin.
The Shpilkes Klezmer Band has become a mainstay of the Purim celebrations and congregational events at various synagogues in MetroWest. The name "Shpilkes" ..(שפּילקעס).. is a Yiddish word for "nervous energy". The word is also sufficiently like the Yiddish term "shpil", meaning play, that it can help to think of it as "playing instead of sitting still". That's where Shpilkes Klezmer Band is at, hyperactive, ready to play and certainly not to sit still. No one can listen to Klezmer by Shpilkes without wanting to dance to its lively, living melodies and relating to the instrumental voices that sing of the human experience.
Temple Aliyah
1664 Central Ave.
Needham, MA 02492
ph. 781 444 8522