 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Get the
Flash Player to listen to sample music from this album.
Recorded at Fortune Hall, Connecticut College, New London,
CT, January 2007 Veretski Pass Cookie Segelstein: Violin
Veretski Pass TRAFIK
Glossary of Suite
Titles The Musicians
Cookie
Segelstein, 19th Century violin and viola, received her Masters
degree in Viola from The Yale School of Music in 1984. Joshua Horowitz, tsimbl and 19th Century accordion, received his Masters degree in Composition and Music Theory from the Academy of Music in Graz, Austria, where he taught Music Theory and served as Research Fellow and Director of the Klezmer Music Research Project for eight years. He is the founder and director of the ensemble Budowitz and has performed with Rubin and Horowitz, Brave Old World, Adrienne Cooper and Ruth Yaakov. Joshua taught Advanced Jazz Theory at Stanford University with the late saxophonist Stan Getz and is a regular teacher at KlezKamp, The Albuquerque Academy and Klez Kanada. His musicological work is featured in four books, including The Sephardic Songbook with Aron Saltiel and The Ultimate Klezmer, and he has written numerous articles on the counterpoint of J.S. Bach. His recordings with Budowitz, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Rubin & Horowitz, Alicia Svigals, Adrianne Greenbaum and Fialke have achieved international recognition and he is the recipient of more than 40 awards, including the Prize of Honor for his orchestral composition, Tenebrae, presented by the Austrian government. Beside his work as a musician, he led the first post-WWII music therapy group at the pioneering Beratungszentrum in Graz, Austria. He is currently working on a book of his essays for Scarecrow Press. Joshua lives in Berkeley, California.
Stuart Brotman,
bass, basy, and baraban, has been an accomplished performer, arranger and recording
artist in the ethnic music field for over 35 years. He holds a B.A. in music
from the University of California at Los Angeles, and has taught at KlezKamp,
Buffalo on the Roof, the Balkan Music and Dance Workshops and KlezKanada and
has been recording, touring, and teaching New Jewish Music with world class
ensemble Brave Old World since 1989. Long admired as a versatile soloist and
sensitive accompanist in traditional and pop music circles, he has toured and
recorded with Canned Heat, Kaleidoscope, Geoff and Maria Muldaur and played
cimbalom with Ry Cooder at Carnegie Hall. Stu appeared in the Los Angeles production
of Ghetto, the San Francisco production of Shlemiel the First, and performs
frequently in ethnic music specialty roles for TV and film. A founding member
of Los Angeles' Ellis Island Band, he has been a moving force in the Klezmer
revival since its beginning. He produced The Klezmorim's Grammy nominated album,
Metropolis. He toured with the Yiddisher Caravan, a federally funded Yiddish
folklife show, and has performed with The Klezmorim, Kapelye, Andy Statman,
the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Davka, The San Francisco Klezmer Experience,
Khevrisa and Itzhak Perlman. Stuart lives in Berkeley, California. The Instruments The violin, played by Cookie Segelstein, a 19th C. Maggini copy, remained the representative instrument of klezmer music right up until the beginning of the 20th Century, when it was replaced by the clarinet as the “quintessentially Jewish” instrument. Early documents from the 16th Century even show the icon of a violin as the emblem for a klezmer guild. Older styles of bowing, fingering, phrasing and ornamenting, imititating various gestures of East Ashkenazic synagogue singing, were considered lost and forgotten until just recently. These techniques form an integral part of the unique sound of Veretski Pass. The viola, also
called Groyse Fidl [Yid. Big Fiddle], Sekund, Kontra or Zsidó Bratsch
[Hun.], played by Cookie Segelstein, is typically used for the constant playing
of chords in a rhythmic style. According to descriptions by Gypsies throughout
Romania and Hungary, Jews typically used various types of this chord instrument,
with either 3 or 4 strings. The function of string accompaniment fell out of
use with the increased inclusion of wind instruments in the klezmer ensembles
around the end of the 19th Century, and although still commonly used in the
folk music of Hungarian minorities throughout Romania, Cookie Segelstein is
the only one to have explored the viola as a solo instrument in klezmer music. The bass, played by Stuart Brotman, made in 1822, is frequently seen in early depictions of klezmer ensembles from the 16th Century, often strapped around the shoulder to enable processional playing. The instrument fell completely out of use by the beginning of the 20th Century - a fact that is difficult to understand, given its versatility. Rather than merely taking over a schematized bass, the bass in Veretski Pass weaves in and out of the bass and tenor role, even interacting abundantly with the melody in the lower octave. It provides the very distinct “moaning” sound typical in klezmer music, through frequent use of glissandi and speech-oriented articulation. The short bow also enables variegated articulation and the three gut strings lend Veretski Pass its unique driving sound. The baraban, (Yid. drum) was reconstructed by the Remo company under the supervision of Stuart Brotman. It has two heads with a cymbal mounted on its top, which is commonly played by a fork or spoon. The Poik provides the backbeat for dancing tunes. In the hands of a skilled player, it can provide an endless array of sounds, at times mimicking the human voice. The Carpathian flute
played by Stu is known in Romania as the tilinca. It is an end-blown flute without finger holes, a simple wooden tube sharpened on one end to form the mouthpiece. It is blown in such a manner as to produce overtones; the end is opened or closed with one finger to select even or odd harmonics. Workshops
Stressing traditional ways of learning folk music, this trio removes the fear of learning by ear, and guides students through a tested method of recognizing and reproducing modal patterns, modulations, and melodic and rhythmic variations. Workshop participants are given the key to unlock the mystery of improvisation in klezmer music; ornaments, melodic fills, rhythmic and cadential variation and spontaneous ensemble arrangement. Above all, proven techniques for keeping musical energy through cross-rhythms, asymmetry, and syncopation are made accessible through exercises and examples. While some of the courses offered in the workshop model are individually taught, by far the most effective are the classes with all three members at the helm. For example, a group ensemble will be led by Josh, with the other two roaming as satellites, offering pointers throughout the ensemble; Cookie hovering over the melody instruments with pointers for ornamentation, and Stu helping the trombones and bass player with moving lines. This approach has been recognized by participants as the most helpful way to integrate newly learned skills into an immediately applicable ensemble experience. For Booking Concerts and Workshops, please contact
info@goldenhorn.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
After
the smash reception of their eponymous 
She
is principal violist in Orchestra New England and assistant principal in The
New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Cookie teaches klezmer fiddling at Living Traditions'
KlezKamp and The Albuquerque Academy, has been on staff twice at Centrum's Festival
of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Wash., and teaches a klezmer class
at Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Connecticut. She has performed
with The Klezical Tradition, The Klezmatics, Klezmer Fats and Swing with Pete
Sokolow and the late Howie Leess, Kapelye, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Conservatory
Band. She is a founding member of The Youngers of Zion with Henry Sapoznik,
and has recently joined Budowitz. She has presented lecture demonstrations and
workshops on klezmer fiddling all over the country, including at Yale University,
University of Wisconsin in Madison, University of Oregon in Eugene, Pacific
University and SUNY-Cortland. She was featured on the ABC documentary, “A
Sacred Noise”, heard on HBO’s “Sex and the City”, and
on several recordings including the Koch International label with Orchestra
New England in “The Orchestral Music of Charles Ives”, The Klezical
Tradition's “Family Portrait” and Adrianne Greenbaum’s “Fleytmuzik”.
She
is also active as a Holocaust educator and curriculum advisor and has been a
frequent lecturer at the Women’s Correctional Facility in Niantic, CT.
Cookie lives in Madison, Connecticut.
Veretski
Pass brings a unique approach of teaching to the world music workshop.
Just as an ensemble must seamlessly integrate the resources of individual players
to produce a combined sound, this group of klezmer music veterans presents a
team teaching model to facilitate the most successful results in student saturation
after an amazingly short amount of time.