End of year 2014 message
I would like to take this opportunity now to wish my friends, colleagues, students, and fans happy Holidays. This has been a truly wonderful and productive year.
Following almost five years of performing together, my band Litvakus has released its first full-length album "Raysn: The Music of Jewish Belarus," bringing to life some beautiful yet lost for decades Litvak Jewish music, Belarusian music, as well as a few original pieces. The centerpiece of the album art designed by Ilusha Tsinadze features a landscape by the notable artist Boris Zaborov of Paris. Co-produced with the album's sound engineer Alex Ryaboy, RAYSN is available for streaming, download, and as CDs on BandCamp, CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon. The record has already earned the band a lot of love from both critics and general audience. It has become a reality thanks only to the generous support of many of you. Thank you We have already gotten a few exciting bookings for the coming year 2015, including New Jersey, Minnesota, and New York. And we are working on more to bring this music "of unadorned beauty" (Ari Davidow, Klezmershack) to you. If you have any ideas or you want to bring this music LIVE wherever on this planet Earth, let me know in a comment or a personal message! And, for a bonus, watch some videos online.
Together with a group of unbelievably talented colleagues, Inna Barmash, Lev "Ljova" Zhurbin, Irina Sheynfeld in the first place, we completed a COJECO BluePrint Fellowship Alumni project, named Shabes Zing-Along. The project brings Jewish traditions through the arts to Russian-speaking Jewish families and is accessible to just anyone. The web-site will go live soon. In the meantime, check out an audio teaser.
Joining the Asylum Arts community and going for a four-day retreat with 70 creative minds from all over the world was one of my biggest artistic discoveries this year that is impossible to underestimate. Artists, check this one out!
Of memorable performances, a truly outstanding one happened to be Raising the Roof gala held by the National Yiddish Theatre - Folksbiene in celebration of the landmark 50th anniversary of the Fiddler on the Roof musical. Sharing the Town Hall's stage with such luminaries as Joshua Bell, Chita Rivera, Chaim Topol and Sheldon Harnick, among others, a lot of them brought together through the extraordinary effort of Zalmen Mlotek felt as once-in-a-lifetime event. See the online version of the Playbill and the video digest of the event.
One big project I have been lucky to be part of (as a score co-arranger and score reader) brought two feasible results this year: the Eternal Echoes CD (Sony Classical) and PBS / WNET 13 video production of the cantorial/ klezmer program initiated by Hankus Netsky, directed by Josh Waletzky, and featuring Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzhak Meir Helfgot. The DVD is now available for online purchase and you can even stream it for free (in the US only).
On the academic side, I was humbled to speak this year at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan and at the Kolbergs of the 21st Century International conference in ethnomusicology held by the Wroclaw University and Collegium of Eastern Europe in Wroclaw, Poland. Teaching a series of seminars in Jewish music at Bard-YIVO Winter program and, remotely, for the Moscow Sefer Center's lecture series was an absolute joy.
While we are at it, let me mention another program I have been teaching for a few years now: Trip to Yiddishland by Workmen's Circle inspired and led by the Yiddish educator extraordinaire Nikolay "Kolya" Borodulin. Stay tuned and APPLY FOR THE 2015 FELLOWSHIP soon.
Lastly... yes, that trumpet I am holding in the picture above. When I was a little kid I wanted to play the trumpet, but I never got to learn how to play it. No, I haven't mastered it since then but I got many of my other dreams come true, also during this year. I did not even think of the possibility to achieve some of them just 365 days ago and here we are... This realization is filling my heart with gratitude, joy, and hope, which I am very happy to be sharing with you now,- for the sake of the good, productive, and successful New Year 2015.