Trampled Manuscripts: The Lost Klezmer Music of Ukraine
Zamlers Trio — In Concert — Sunday, May 19, 2-4pm
Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site,
29 Warburton Ave., Yonkers, NY
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Suggested donation $18
This program is free and open to the public. Suggested donation of $18 per person supports free programs like this one. Registration is not required, but you can make a donation ahead of time at the link below. Seating is first-come, first-served.
About the Concert: Reimagining the Lost Klezmer Music of Ukraine
A chance encounter in Tokyo a few years ago led to the sharing of a unique corpus of musical manuscripts from the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine previously unavailable to klezmer musicians and scholars. This concert will showcase some of the instrumental and vocal music in the corpus. We’ll explore S. An-ski’s radical vision that the folklore of the Jewish people is an oral Torah as important as the Talmud of the sages. This vision inspired the An-ski ethnographic expeditions of 1912-1914, and are the backdrop for An-ski’s most famous work, The Dybbuk. An-ski hoped that the Jewish people would become Zamlers (collectors) who would continue to engage with Ashkenazic folklore as a living, breathing legacy. We invite you to join our “community expedition” into this extraordinary discovery!
Read more about the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project here.
What is ‘Chamber Klezmer’?
Chamber klezmer describes ensembles seeking a historically informed klezmer performance practice grounded in the violin-centered music of the eastern European klezmer tradition.
Ensembles working in this style often center the violin as the lead instrument and strings as the core of the accompaniment, but they may also include flutes and other woodwinds, or more contemporary instruments such as accordion. Repertoire choices are also different than what you would hear from the familiar dance-oriented American klezmer band. There is a rich repertoire of wedding music sometimes referred to as “Moralishe Nigunim,” or tunes of a ‘high moral character.’ These are more elaborate, virtuosic pieces that were used to accompany rituals such as the seating and veiling of the bride, greeting and honoring guests at the wedding feast, and for solo dancing. In a historical setting, the lead violin would have been the only soloist, but in contemporary practice, different instruments take the lead and more elaborate and imaginative harmony lines are often developed within the ensemble. This kind of spontaneity leads to a richly textured, spontaneous expression based on the intonatsia (Russian for intonation, or ‘accent’) of klezmer phrasing and ornamentation, but that is also open to referencing a range of folk and classical music traditions.
About the Zamlers Trio
Raffi Boden is a NY-based cellist, composer, improviser and educator known for his versatility and innovation in a variety of genres. Equally at home in classical and klezmer, Raffi holds a Masters from the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Krosnick and a frequent performer with the Axiom ensemble. He holds a BM in music and BA in French from Oberlin College & Conservatory, where he was the winner of the 2018 Concerto Competition, served as Principal Cellist of the Oberlin Orchestra in their 2019 Carnegie Hall performance, and premiered several works with the Contemporary Ensemble. Raffi has won fellowships to study at the Kneisel Hall and Aspen festivals and in 2023 was a featured performer at the Caroga Lake Arts Festival.
In the klezmer world, Raffi is a member of the band Mamaliga, with whom he’s performed internationally as faculty at Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKanada and Yiddish New York. Their debut album of original klezmer compositions, Dos Gildn Bletl, was released in 2021 and hailed as “virtuosic and vibrant.” He is also a member of the six-piece chamber-jazz ensemble Simone Baron & Arco Belo, with whom he’s performed at the Kennedy Center and the Jazz Gallery.
Christina Crowder (accordion) has been performing and researching Jewish music for thirty years, beginning in Budapest, Hungary in 1993 as a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye, and continuing with a Fulbright grant to Romania to document Jewish music in 1999, and since 2002 with an active research, teaching, and performing career in the US. She is Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute, which has been awarded three NEH Grants for Institute projects (2021-2025). Current projects include compilation of a folio of Jewish-adjacent Moldavian music, and publication of selected field recordings from the Fulbright grant period. Christina lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and performs with her klezmer quartet Bivolița. She also performs regularly with Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentschen, the Dave Levitt Klezmer Trio and many others. She has been a guest instructor in klezmer accordion and ensemble performance in the US, Canada, and Europe, and was both musical director and performer in the 2019 Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the 2020 ART Portland productions of the Broadway play “Indecent.” With the Klezmer Institute, Christina edited the Levitt Legacy music folio, and has led KMDMP artist residency programs in Connecticut, western Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, France, and Belgium.
Keryn Kleiman is a New York-based violinist specializing in Jewish and Eastern European folk styles. She is a member of a number of klezmer groups, including Bivolita, the New York Fidl Kepelye, and Kadya’s Project and has performed classical and folk music internationally and nationally. Notable recent engagements include playing with renowned klezmer musicians at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has taught at Klezkanada and Yiddish New York. Keryn graduated with a degree in ethnomusicology from Columbia University-Barnard College, where she was the student-leader of the Columbia Klezmer Band. She was awarded a grant to research Jewish music and its relationship to co-territorial repertoires in Moldova. Since then, she has focused on Bessarabian and Romanian styles, studying in Moldova and Romania. Keryn attended the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a Preparatory Division Concerto Competition Winner. She also recently completed her doctorate in clinical psychology.
