Shimmering Lights
"Every folkmusic is great, but from the jewish I must say, it's unique, it is so many-coloured, sometimes appears happy but then in reality is very tragical.Most of the time it's a laughing through tears,"those words of Dmitri Schostakowitsch once described Klezmer.
And even the same he could have said about Yale Strom's Broken Consort.
With their concert,the band finished sunday evening the International Klezmer Festival Intermezzo 2019 at Cultureforum.
The guests from USA tell about the jewish lighting celebration Chanukka which as well as the christian candlelight celebration takes place in dark december.
The melodies like to change between major and minor, their different types of scale called "Gustn", can be interpreted by the musicians in a lot of ways.This possibility is shown by the Combo.
Again and again the tunes get higher or lower, just as the intention and the melody asks for.
Surely there is a lot of improvisation when Yale Strom (Violine)and Elizabeth Schwartz (Voice), Sara Caswell (Violine), David Wallace (Viola), Claudia Herold (Cello), Petr Dvorsky (Kontrabass), Fred Benedetti(Gitarre) und Amos Hoffmann (Oud, Gitarre) are on stage.
The idea "broken"means that a consort as a family of music instruments, which normally are connected and are relatives, which something similiar brings together,now changes while the principle of music of renaissance by guitar, oud and voice is broken and enlarged with a lot of joy and delight.
That is how a sound is created which can be called "as far as heaven", full of wonderful rememberance of childhood, of heartwarming traditions and glittering like the shimmering lights, which is called the title of the new CD of the formation.
Singer Elizabeth Schwartz doesn't hesitate with trillers without exaggerating.She sounds so nutritious like the feast, so strengthenend like the beeing together with family and friends.
She invites to dance, but also to stop and to think about the people who are missing.
Even though together with the band it will be different to extraordinary traditional.
A lot of families in USA today are mixed-and it is shown well by the music.
The yiddish song is mixed with classic, some jazz and blues, also carefully bluegrass and swing.And you can see it coming up, growing and have success.
Yale Strom can do this so easy, because he as an expert of yiddish and easteuropean music and as a researcher
knows his basic best.
He knows the sound of the former shtetl and he knows as well how to make music in USA today.
This circumstance is the reason of his cheerful calmness, which is so good for his songs as it would be for a family celebration.