Klezmer Ensemble

with special guests Veretski Pass (Berkeley), performing The Magid Chronicles

Thursday, November 21 - 2019

Veretski Pass (Berkeley, CA) residency November 18-21, 2019; Veretski Pass to perform in concert with Joel Rubin and the UVA Klezmer Ensemble in Old Cabell Hall on Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 8:00pm, presenting “The Magid Chronicles”

Charlottesville, VA – The University of Virginia McIntire Department of Music, together with the co-sponsorship of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Jewish Studies Program, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Jewish Music Forum will host a residency with the acclaimed, Berkeley-based trio Veretski Pass (Cookie Segelstein, violin; Joshua Horowitz, accordion; Stuart Brotman, bass) from November 18-21, 2019. Over the course of four days, the trio will present a colloquium (http://music.virginia.edu/Laughter-through-Tears), visit classes, and rehearse with the UVA Klezmer Ensemble. The visit will culminate in a performance of “The Magid Chronicles” by Veretski Pass with clarinetist Joel Rubin and the UVA Klezmer Ensemble on Thursday, November 21st, 2019 at 8pm in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium at the University of Virginia. 

The event will feature the music from the group’s most recent project in collaboration with Rubin, “The Magid Chronicles” (Golden Horn Records, 2019). The project is dedicated to materials collected by Sofia Magid, a musicologist and ethnographer who documented traditional Jewish music in Belarus and Ukraine during the Stalinist regime of the 1920s and 30s. Veretski Pass and Rubin’s work with the materials spurred a set of new compositions, improvisations, and recompositions derived from and inspired by the Magid collection and drawing on traditions and cultures as diverse as Romanian, Turkish, Greek, and Hutsul. Although derived largely from ethnographic work, this work is essentially a creative re-imagination.

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. Often touring in Europe, Veretski Pass has twice been chosen as ambassadors representing traditional Jewish Instrumental Music of Eastern Europe for the German World Exhibition of Klezmer History (Klezmerwelten) and have headlined the Jewish Music Festival of the University of London. They recently performed at the prestigious Concertgebouw Concert Hall in Amsterdam to a sold out audience with a standing ovation, and their CDs have repeatedly been on the 10-best recordings lists of journalists. Cookie’s unique violin style was featured for a Jewish wedding scene on HBO’s “Sex and the City” and Josh and Stu’s compositions provided the music for Jes Benstock's award-winning film “The Holocaust Tourist."

Now in its fourteenth year, the UVA Klezmer Ensemble has become a vital part of the musical community of Central and Northern Virginia, performing each semester in Old Cabell Hall as well as at conferences and festivals throughout the region. The ensemble is currently made up of undergraduates, grad students, and other members of the greater Central Virginia community. The group is committed to ethnic, racial, cultural and religious diversity. Current and recent members have backgrounds from the US, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Lebanon, Armenia, Iran, Bangladesh, and India, with religious backgrounds ranging from Jewish to Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist.

Listen to a recent radio program on PRX, "Sounds Jewish" by Andy Muchin, about Veretski Pass: https://beta.prx.org/stories/284136.

View a short clip from a recent concert of “The Magid Chronicles” at Yiddish Summer Weimar: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=382169922656191.

View a clip of the program “Poyln” from Erfurt, Germany, 2016: https://vimeo.com/209509674.

Tickets for the Klezmer Ensemble performance are $10 for adults, $9 for UVA faculty and staff, and $5 for students. Tickets for University of Virginia students are free if reserved in advance at the Arts Box Office www.artsboxoffice.virginia.edu. Tickets are available in advance or at the door.

Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA’s historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda. Parking is available in the Central Grounds parking garage on Emmet Street, in the C1 parking lot off McCormick Rd, and in the parking lots at the UVA Corner. Handicap parking is available in the small parking lot adjacent to Bryan Hall.

All events are subject to change.

 

Address

UVA Department of Music
112 Old Cabell Hall
P.O. Box 400176 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4176

Email: music@virginia.edu