Department of Music

• Thursday, April 25, 2013
• Old Cabell Hall
• 8:00pm
• $10 General / $5 Students /
  Free for UVA Students in Advance

The University of Virginia McIntire Department of Music's Klezmer Ensemble will be performing with special guests in residency Cookie Segelstein, violin, and Joshua Horowitz, 19th century button accordion. For more information about the guests and the full schedule of events, visit our webpage on the residency.

The UVA Klezmer Ensemble under the direction of Director of Music Performance, Joel Rubin, is made up of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as members of the greater Central Virginia community, and is dedicated to exploring klezmer and other Jewish and East European musical traditions from the 18th to the 21st century. Each year, the ensemble hosts klezmer artists of international stature, who coach the group for a week and perform with them. The UVA Klezmer Ensemble, now in its seventh year, has established itself as a vital part of the musical community of Central and Northern Virginia. Besides performing biannually in Old Cabell Hall, appearances have included at the Jewish Studies conference “Jewish Renaissance and Renaissances” at UVA, the College of William and Mary, the University of Richmond, the Gravity Lounge, the 214 Community Arts Center, WeArts Festival (McGuffey Arts Center), New Bridges (Harrisonburg), Congregation Beth Israel, Chabad of UVA, the Piedmont Council for the Arts’ annual Spring for the Arts benefit, the Charlottesville Festival of Cultures, and the Jewish Community Council (Lynchburg).

The first part of the concert will feature a trio performance by Segelstein, Horowitz, and Rubin. From 1992-94, the acclaimed duo Rubin & Horowitz performed throughout Europe. Their pioneering CD, Bessarabian Symphony: Early Jewish Instrumental Music, is credited with having initiated the historically-informed performance practice movement in klezmer music. It was called “very pure ... authoritative” by the Wall Street Journal, and “a major document of the so-called ‘klezmer revival’” in the journal, Ethnomusicology. This will be their first joint performance since 1994 and the first performance as a trio with Cookie Segelstein. After intermission, the trio will be joined by the UVA Klezmer Ensemble in a performance of Segelstein’s and Horowitz’s repertoire.

The duo of Cookie Segelstein and Joshua Horowitz (Berkeley, CA) offers a unique and exciting combination of virtuosic musicianship and raw energy that has excited concertgoers across the world. Playing in an unbound, energetic village style, this veteran duo plays a multicultural stew of music from historical Eastern Europe: Jewish instrumental klezmer tunes coexist together with folk melodies from Ukraine, the Carpathians, Moldavia, Romania, Hungary, and of the Tatars, Hutzuls, Ruthenians, and Ottoman Turks. Much of this rare music has been gleaned from field recordings gathered by the musicians themselves in over 14 countries spanning over 20 years. With its colorful instrumentation, unique arrangements and repertoire, this seminal duo carries on the ancient tradition of klezmer musicians, playing music of all kinds, but with a recognizably Yiddish sound.

Segelstein and Horowitz’s music has won numerous awards, among them the BBC’s Critics Circle award for best CD, the Belgian Gandalf Award for Best Concert and the Viennese Fritz Spielmann Award. They have twice been chosen as ambassadors representing traditional Jewish Music of Eastern Europe for the German traveling exhibition, Klezmerwelten, and have headlined the Jewish Music Festival of the University of London. They have been featured internationally in concerts at prestigious venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and their CDs have repeatedly been on the ten-best recordings lists of journalists. Segelstein’s unique violin style was featured for the Jewish wedding scene on HBO’s Sex and the City, and Horowitz’s compositons provided the music for Jes Benstock’s award-winning film, The Holocaust Tourist, as well as for the German TV series, Berlin, Berlin.

Cookie Segelstein, violin and viola, received her Master’s degree in viola from The Yale School of Music in 1984 and is principal violist in Orchestra New England and assistant principal viola in the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. She is the founder and director of Veretski Pass, a member of Budowitz and The Youngers of Zion, and has performed with Kapelye, The Klezmatics, Frank London, Klezmer Fats and Swing, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, and The Klezmer Conservatory Band. Segelstein has presented lecture-demonstrations and workshops on klezmer fiddling all over the world, including at Yale University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Oregon, and at Yiddish Summer Weimar. She is on staff at KlezKamp , KlezKanada, Klezfest London, and has also taught at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend. Segelstein was featured on the ABC documentary, A Sacred Noise, and may be heard on the recordings of Veretski Pass, Budowitz, Orchestra New England’s The Orchestral Music of Charles Ives, Frank London’s Hazanos, and A Living Tradition with German Goldenshteyn. She is also active as a Holocaust educator, curriculum advisor and lecturer.

Joshua Horowitz, 19th century accordion, received his Master’s degree in Composition and Music Theory from the University of Music and the Performing Arts 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, a founding member of Veretski Pass and has performed with Rubin & Horowitz, Brave Old World, Adrienne Cooper, and Ruth Yaakov. Horowitz’s music was recently featured in the British film, Some of my best friends are... Jewish/Muslim, awarded the Sandford St. Martin Trust Religious Broadcasting Award. He taught Advanced Jazz Theory at Stanford University with the late saxophonist Stan Getz and is a regular teacher at KlezKamp, the Albuquerque Academy, and KlezKanada. His musicological work is featured in four books, including The Sephardic Songbook and The Ultimate Klezmer, and he has written numerous articles on the counterpoint of J.S. Bach. Horowitz’s recordings with Veretski Pass, Budowitz, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Rubin & Horowitz, and Alicia Svigals have received international recognition. 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, Horowitz 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.

The UVA Klezmer Ensemble, now in its seventh year, has established itself as a vital part of the musical community of Central and Northern Virginia. Besides performing biannually in Old Cabell Hall, appearances have included at the Jewish Studies conference “Jewish Renaissance and Renaissances” at UVA, the College of William and Mary, the University of Richmond, the Gravity Lounge, the 214 Community Arts Center, WeArts Festival (McGuffey Arts Center), New Bridges (Harrisonburg), Congregation Beth Israel, Chabad of UVA, the Piedmont Council for the Arts’ annual Spring for the Arts benefit, the Charlottesville Festival of Cultures, and the Jewish Community Council (Lynchburg).

Joel Rubin’s duo CD with acclaimed jazz pianist Uri Caine, Azoy Tsu Tsveyt (Tzadik), was chosen by exclaim.ca as one of the 10 favorites in the category Improv & Avant-Garde for 2011. He performed on the new international recording collaboration (US/Germany/Latvia), Alpen Klezmer by Andrea Pancur and Ilya Shneyveys, and a piece of his was selected for the third time for inclusion in a Rough Guide anthology. In the past year, he has taught at workshops in Albuquerque and at Yiddish Summer Weimar in Germany and will be teaching and performing at KlezWest 2013, Second Klezmer Festival in Insul, Germany. He was featured in a TV segment by Feature Story News broadcast in February, 2013, and will appear in the World Wind Wizards concert sponsored by the World Music Institute at Symphony Space, NY in May.

Tickets for the Klezmer Ensemble performance are $10 for adults and $5 for students. UVA students may request one complimentary ticket up until midnight prior to the concert.