Title: UVA Klezmer Ensemble with special guest Susan Watts, trumpet
Location: Old Cabell Hall Auditorium, University of Virginia
Description: Elaine and Susan Watts klezmer duo.
Start Time: 20:00
Date: 2008-11-23
End Time: 22:00

Elaine Watts and her daughter Susan are a fascinating duo. They not only play klezmer (traditional Eastern European Jewish folk music) exquisitely, but also have an intriguing background. Elaine, a brilliant percussionist and the first woman to graduate in percussion from the Curtis Institute of Music, is a third generation klezmer performer from the Hoffman family, Pennsylvania’s premier klezmer family. Read more…

The Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble was founded in 1994, the first such group dedicated to the performance of the classical Eastern European Jewish instrumental (”klezmer”) repertoire. The ensemble consists of seven professional musicians from the United States, Hungary and Italy and forms a link with the multi-cultural tradition of the turn-of-the-century Eastern European Jewish orchestras. The Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble therefore combines the skills of Jewish, Rom (Gypsy) and non-Jewish artists: in addition to the Italian master accordionist Claudio Jacomucci - equally at home with the tangos of Astor Piazzolla, the contemporary music of Luciano Berio or Jewish music - and the charismatic cimbalom virtuoso Kálmán Balogh - scion of one of Hungary’s most prominent Rom musical dynasties - Rubin is joined by László Major, Sándor Budai, Ferenc Kovács (of the Dresch Quartet) and Csaba Novák from Budapest, all of whom bring extensive experience with jazz, traditional Eastern European and urban Gypsy music to the ensemble.
Read more…

Rubin review Slobin JAMS

Review of Mark Slobin’s edited volume American Klezmer in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 60 (1) (Spring 2007): 238-253.