Ladies and gentlemen, this CD is the product of the sheer joy, enthusiasm, and fun that can only come from cutting short lunches and dinners for four intense days, and sneaking into a hotel room with some of the world’s greatest klezmorim to just sit [+]Ladies and gentlemen, this CD is the product of the sheer joy, enthusiasm, and fun that can only come from cutting short lunches and dinners for four intense days, and sneaking into a hotel room with some of the world’s greatest klezmorim to just sit, roll tape, and play. And I mean “play” in every ear-to-ear-grinning, schoolyard-giddy sense of the word.
Yes, it was at the 21st annual KlezKamp festival in the Catskills that eight brave souls volunteered their precious time to pay homage to a true living master - klezmer clarinetist German Abramovich Goldenshteyn. Scheduling recording sessions around our teaching duties (read: in lieu of meals) we commandeered a room closed for repairs and set up our makeshift recording studio (so makeshift, in fact, that when Cookie's violin needed more isolation – we moved her into the bathroom!)
Just listen to Hank’s banjo act as a snare drum to Aaron’s poyk, or how Susan’s trumpet trades licks with Cookie’s fiddle and Josh’s accordion. No. Listen to the moment in “Tserenkutsa” (Track 16) when Rubinchik’s tuba stinger catches German off-guard and triggers his helpless laughter. (What’s really great is that, after some vodka and lunch at German's place in Sheepshead Bay, I played him the rough mix and he laughed at exactly the same point, in exactly the same way. “Oh, that Marik,” he said as he giggled and shook his index finger.)
By no means shall I attempt to provide a full biography of the guest of honor, but for the uninitiated, German Goldenshteyn brings with him a repertoire and a performance style missing in American klezmer music. Born in 1934, he lost his parents in the Holocaust and after the war, he and his siblings entered an orphanage in Odessa. As a young man, German successfully auditioned for the army band school, after which, he spent 10 years playing in military orchestras and completing his service.
German later studied at a technical institute in Kiev, earning an engineering degree, and became a machinist in the town of Mohyliv-Podilskyi in Moldavia. It was there that he met some older musicians at a Jewish wedding, and had another life-changing audition: the clarinetist of the wedding band handed him his horn and commanded, "play." As a result, from the mid 1950's until he came to the Unit
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