A quintet of alumni all-stars will return to perform with the Ithaca College Klezmorim at the Fourth Annual Klezmer Gala on Sunday, February 25. The concert, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall, with a dance workshop with Roey Mendel to begin at 7:00 p.m.
The Ithaca College Klezmorim is a School of Music-supported student ensemble that explores klezmer, the secular music of the Eastern European Jews. Klezmer uses a wide range of instruments that often include the clarinet, violin, piano, accordion, trumpet, and trombone. Under the direction of professor of music Peter Rothbart, the ensemble focuses on learning and performing in the traditional vein of klezmer, so that both the musicians and their audiences can understand and appreciate the intricacies and inner beauties of the musical form. The School of Music is one of the few schools in the country to offer klezmer as a regular credit-bearing chamber ensemble.
"Klezmer mirrors the wealth, sorrow, and diversity of the Jewish experience in Germany, Russia, and Eastern Europe," says Rothbart. "The music is both irrepressibly joyful and yet mournful, an expression of the people and the times."
Joining the group at the gala concert -- and performing for the first time together since they graduated from Ithaca College -- will be Adam Berkowitz ’01, Steve Solook ’03, C. J. Glass ’05, Ryan Zawel ’05, and Will Cicola ’06. Zawel is teaching a course this semester in the School of Music, The Klezmer Movement: A Survey of Yiddish Street Music.
The Ithaca College Klezmorim hold workshops and master classes and have performed with such klezmer luminaries as the Klezmatics, Frank London, Joel Rubin, and Pete Rushevsky. The ensemble performs annually at the Jewish Music and Cultural Festival of Central New York. Their debut CD, Music for Hawaiian Gardens, is available on CDBaby.com and through activemusic.org. For more information, visit https://www.ithaca.edu/music/klezmorim/.
The Klezmer Gala is sponsored by the Ithaca College Jewish studies program and the School of Music. For more information on the concert or the Jewish studies program, contact Jill Goldsmith at (607) 274-1988 or jgoldsmith@ithaca.edu.
