Programs

Joel Rubin’s various ensembles, collaborations and special projects

Ensembles

Joel Rubin Ensemble

The Joel Rubin Ensemble was founded in Berlin in 1994, the first group dedicated to the performance of the classic eastern European Jewish instrumental klezmer repertoire of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It grew out of Rubin’s work with his earlier bands Brave Old World (1989-1992) and Rubin & Horowitz (1992-1994). The music of the ensemble is an expression of Rubin’s long-term meditation on the Russian-Jewish musical legacy. It is not, however, an attempt to recreate 19th century performance practice or otherwise hearken back to the topos of life in the Jewish shtetl; rather, the group brings together some of the world’s great improvising musicians to explore how Jewish music could sound at the beginning of the 21st century – music from another time and place, but thoroughly grounded in the present. The band creates its own sonic universe, full of depth, virtuosity, playfulness and introspection. The kaleidoscopic soundscape filters the many historical layers of traditional Jewish music through the lenses of the multifarious musical backgrounds of the band’s members, ranging from classical to Gypsy to free jazz to contemporary art music. Here the interaction of a great improvising jazz ensemble melds with the delicacy of a chamber music group and the drive of a hot wedding band at the cusp of klezmer, Roma (Gypsy) and other Eastern European traditions.

The band appears in varying combinations of two to eight musicians. Over the years, band members have included Hungarian Rom cimbalom virtuoso Kálmán Balogh, Italian accordion wizard Claudio Jacomucci, master klezmer fiddlers David Chernyavsky and Steve Greenman, as well as violinists Sándor Budai, László Major and Anastasia Chernyavsky, trumpeter, violinist and jazz composer Ferenc Kovács, bassist Csaba Novák, American klezmer revivalist Pete Rushefsky on tsimbl, trombonist Ryan Zawel, and monster improvising cellist Hank Roberts. By drawing its members from the United States, Russia, Hungary and Italy and combining the skills of Jewish, Romani and non-Jewish artists, the band forms an aesthetic bridge between the multicultural tradition of the urban turn-of-the-century eastern European Jewish orchestras and today’s postmodern landscape. more...

Joel Rubin, Pete Rushefsky

An evening of intimate klezmer duets featuring internationally acclaimed clarinetist Joel Rubin and tsimbl (hammered dulcimer) revivalist Pete Rushefsky The Klik and Klak of Klez spin yarns as they weave their way effortlessly through gems of eastern European and American klezmer and hasidic music. Recent performances include the Richmond Folk Festival, The Stone, and Franklin and Marshall College.

Joel Rubin (USA), clarinet, has long been considered by many to be the leading performer of Jewish instrumental klezmer music in the world today, earning accolades from sources as diverse as klezmer giants Dave Tarras and Max Epstein, international clarinet soloist Richard Stoltzman, avant garde composer John Zorn, and Nobel Prize Laureate and poet Roald Hoffmann. He studied with Stoltzman and Kalmen Opperman, attended the California Institute of the Arts and received a BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase. Rubin holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from City University (London) for his pioneering work on improvisation and ornamentation in klezmer clarinet music. He is currently Assistant Professor and Director of Music Performance at the University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Music. He has concertized throughout Europe, North America and Asia since the 1980s. In addition to appearances with traditional performers such as the Epstein Brothers, Moshe “Moussa” Berlin, Seymour Rexsite and Miriam Kressyn, Leon Schwartz, Sid Beckerman, Pete Sokolow, Danny Rubinstein, Ben Bazyler, and Leopold Kozlowski, Rubin was the founder and clarinetist of some of the most internationally respected klezmer ensembles, including the pioneering revival group Brave Old World. Rubin’s albums Midnight Prayer (Traditional Crossroads), Beregovski’s Khasene (Beregovski’s Wedding), Bessarabian Symphony, Zeydes un Eyniklekh (Grandfathers and Grandsons) and Hungry Hearts are considered to be masterpieces of classical Eastern European and American Jewish music. His music can be heard in several films, including the recent L’armée du crime (France, 2009), and the award-winning documentary portrait A Tickle in the Heart (Germany/Switz./USA 1996) about the Epstein Brothers Orchestra. more...

UVA Klezmer Ensemble under the direction of Joel Rubin

Official U.Va. Klezmer Ensemble webpage

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Special

My little town Zloczow: A Survivor’s Memoir

Joel Rubin Ensemble with Roald Hoffmann.

Zloczow (now Zolochiv, Ukraine) was a thriving Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian town near Lwow/Lemberg. Then, during three years, 1941-44 the Jewish population perished in the Holocaust. One of the survivors, Roald Hoffmann, tells in his own words, in readings from others, and in poems, the story of the town, its rich religious and cultural heritage (reaching out to America through the Yiddish writer Moshe Leyb Halpern, the photographer Weegee and others). Hoffmann, who was named after the discoverer Roald Amundsen, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in his new home America, while at the same time becoming known for his poems, essays, and plays. A lifelong connoisseur of music, Hoffmann’s memories of the musical traditions of his home town were revived by the music and research of Joel Rubin. Kindred spirits in their approaches to science, the arts, and religion, they began to perform together, drawing into the moving poetry and memoirs of Hoffmann and Rubin’s musical score the thoughts and the musical traditions of the great hasidic masters, one of whom was Yekhiel Mekhl, the Maggid of Zloczow. The program interweaves text with appropriate musical selections, including hasidic, cantorial and klezmer music from the region of Zloczow.

The Nign of Reb Mendel: Hasidic Songs in Yiddish

The Joel Rubin Ensemble featuring Rabbi Eli Silberstein, voice

The Nign of Reb Mendel is a continuation of Rubin’s exploration of the intersection between the Jewish instrumental klezmer and Hasidic vocal traditions that began with Midnight Prayer. It grew out of the four years Rubin spent documenting the vocal repertoire of Rabbi Silberstein. Whereas Midnight Prayer featured instrumental versions of a number of Hasidic nigunim, this project integrates a Hasidic singer as a member of the klezmer ensemble, something that had not been done since the klezmer revival began in the 1970s. The singing of nigunim has occupied a unique position in Hasidic life since the emergence of the movement in mid-18th century eastern Europe. Songs and, especially, pure melody are seen as being capable of establishing a direct connection to God, without the interference of text. These beautiful melodies, which range from introspective shepherd’s laments to ecstatic dance tunes, have been created over the centuries by Hasidic rabbis and musicians and may be sung at many occasions: in the synagogue, at the Hasidic rebbe’s table, at sabbath and holiday gatherings, at life-cycle celebrations like the wedding, in the home, or today as popular music of Jews the world wide. It is the Yiddish song repertoire as it was cultivated among Hasidic and other religious Jews of eastern European heritage (e.g. Lithuanian ultra-orthodox) for over 250 years that forms the core of The Nign of Reb Mendel. Here we present largely unknown gems, such as the Nign of R. Meir Shapiro of Lublin and Geloybt bistu (Praised Are You), alongside chestnuts such as the Dudele of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev and Vos vet zayn? (What Will Happen?). By combining old Hasidic nigunim with the sound of instrumental klezmer music, the ensemble reunites two worlds, creating an aesthetic close to that which might perhaps have been heard by the Ba’al Shem Tov (founder of the Hasidic movement) or R. Shneur Zalman (founder of Chabad hasidism) and their descendents, yet which is thoroughly contemporary at the same time. more...

The Tarras Legacy: Celebrating the King of American Klezmer Music

This special program was originally developed for the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, to be performed at the beautifully restored Museum at Eldridge Street’s synagogue sanctuary. It features live performances as well as rare video footage and photographs of Dave Tarras from the Center for Traditional Music and Dance’s Archive. Clarinetist Dave Tarras (1895-1989) remains the most influential and well-known American klezmer musician of all time. Through his compositions, live performances and recordings, the Ukrainian-born virtuoso was the unrivaled leader in the creation of a uniquely American klezmer sound.

While the popularity of klezmer amongst American Jews declined precipitously after WWII, Tarras’s career was reborn in the late 1970’s through a project conducted by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (then called the Balkan Arts Center). The project played a major role in sparking an international revival of klezmer, and thirty-one years after his death, Tarras remains an indelible force in the performance and conception of klezmer. more...