Department of Music

Alan Bern (Brave Old World, The Other Europeans) Residency March 22-27, 2014

Residency Schedule:

The University of Virginia McIntire Department of Music, together with the Jewish Studies Program, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the Office of the Provost and the Vice Provost for the Arts, will host accordionist, pianist, and composer Alan Bern from the groups Brave Old World and The Other Europeans for a residency from March 22-27, 2014. Highlights of the residency will include a screening of the documentary film, The Broken Sound (Germany, 2012) on Saturday, March 22 at 5 pm in the Newcomb Hall Commonwealth Room, a public klezmer workshop on Sunday, March 23 from 11 am – 2 pm in Old Cabell Hall 107, a combined Jewish Studies and Center for German Studies lunch colloquium, “The Weimar Klezmer Republic: Creating a Center for Yiddish Culture in Germany,” on Wednesday, March 26 from 12 – 1:30 pm (Nau 342), and will culminate with Bern’s performance in duo with Joel Rubin and as guest artist with the University of Virginia Klezmer Ensemble under the direction of Rubin on Thursday, March 27th, 2014 at 8pm in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium. The residency will be filled out with numerous classroom visits as well as less formal gatherings with students and faculty.

Based in Berlin, Germany since the late 1980s, Alan Bern is the founding director of Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy, a project development center and cultural platform with an innovative educational curriculum dedicated to intercultural music education, which brings together musicians, artists, and scholars from throughout the world while maintaining a flourishing relationship to the local arts and music scene in Weimar, Germany. He is the leader of The Other Europeans, a musical collaboration between renowned klezmer and Romani musicians, and musical director of Brave Old World, the pioneering klezmer revival group he and Rubin started in 1989. Bern has been an important figure in the klezmer revival and improvised music since the 1980s, collaborating with numerous artists including Itzhak Perlman, Guy Klucevsek, The Klezmatics, and Andy Statman. As an educator, he has taught at KlezKanada, Klezfest London, YiddishFest Moscow and elsewhere. Bern earned a DMA in Music Composition at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati (2006). His compositions have received awards in the USA, Europe and Israel, and he also writes and directs music for theater and modern dance productions. He received a Ruth Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in world music from the Dance and Folk Festival Rudolstadt in 2009 (http://www.alanbern.net).

The first part of the concert will feature a duo performance by Bern and Rubin. The two met as teachers at KlezKamp in 1985 and formed a duo in 1988, performing together until 1992 both as duo and as members of the quartet Brave Old World. Their CD, Brave Old World: Klezmer Music (Flying Fish, 1990) was featured on the Selected list of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Klezmershack.com writes about the CD, “Brave Old World are masters at taking klezmer roots and making them sound of this time and place. This isn’t really traditional klezmer, but that’s what it feels like until you listen closely and realize how many innovations are present in the music.” After intermission, the duo will be joined by the UVA Klezmer Ensemble in a performance of klezmer and Romani repertoire from Moldavia and elsewhere.

The UVA Klezmer Ensemble, now in its eighth year, has become a vital part of the musical community of Central and Northern Virginia, performing in Old Cabell Hall as well as at conferences, festivals, and clubs in Central and Northern Virginia. The ensemble is made up of both undergraduate and graduate students from across grounds, faculty, alumni and other members of the greater Central Virginia community, and is dedicated to exploring klezmer and other Jewish and Eastern European musical traditions from the 18th to the 21st century. The group is committed to ethnic, racial, cultural and religious diversity. Current and recent members have backgrounds from the US, Russia, Israel, Lebanon, Armenia, Iran, and India, with religious backgrounds ranging from Jewish to Christian, Hindu and Muslim. Each year, the ensemble hosts klezmer artists of international stature, who coach the group for a week and perform with them.

Joel Rubin is a 2013-14 recipient of the Mead Endowment, a program whose mission is to promote the University’s unique tradition of faculty involvement with students by identifying outstanding teachers and encouraging them to take part in that tradition. The Mead funding will enable the UVA Klezmer Ensemble to record a CD documenting its work at culmination of the spring semester. Rubin’s recent activities include a CD with jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine (“Azoy Tsu Tsveyt,” Tzadik Records), teaching at the International Master Classes of the World Klezmer Center in Safed, Israel and at KlezKamp in New York, and performances at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater (Symphony Space) in New York, and at the Music Gallery in Toronto with Uri Caine. In 2014 he will be a featured performer at the International Festival of Sacred Music in Fribourg, Switzerland, and at the KlezCalifornia festival.

Tickets for the Klezmer Ensemble performance are $10 for adults 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 at the Central Grounds Parking Garage, or in the lots off University Avenue at the University Corner. Handicapped parking is available in the C1 parking lot or in designated spaces on McCormick Avenue.

For more information please call the McIntire Department of Music at 434.924.3052.

The Broken Sound trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYBUwTPTuzA

Alan Bern Accordion Solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVRaRfVwplo

Alan Bern, Piano/Composition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ytpa4f4Rc

Sponsored by:
UVA McIntire Dept. of Music

James Dunton Gift (Jazz Program)

UVA Jewish Studies Program

UVA Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies

UVA Office of the Provost and the Vice Provost for the Arts

Full Residency Schedule: