Ensembles

The Joel Rubin Ensemble was founded in Berlin in 1994. 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 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…

The acclaimed Berkeley-based trio, Veretski Pass and Joel Rubin have been collaborating since 2013 on various musical projects. Most recently, the group recorded The Magid Chronicles, www.magidchronicles.com, a gorgeous, unified work centering on the pieces collected by Sofia Magid, the Jewish ethnographer who worked intensively to document Jewish music in Belarus and Ukraine during Stalin’s regime in the 1920s and 30s. Their previous project, Poyln: A Gilgul (Poland: A Metamorphoses, www.poyln.com), celebrates the interface between Polish and klezmer music and received a 5-star review from the British world music magazine, Songlines. What separates Veretski Pass from other klezmer groups is their taste for surprise, consisting of odd phrases, striking harmonic twists, swirling ornaments and sudden unisons. As much as the group excavates ethnic recordings, they weave their own compositions and improvisations into the suites,…

Performing as a duo since 1988, the co-founders of Brave Old World still come together on occasion to perform in their original duo formation.

Rubin and influential composer-improviser Caine recorded the album Azoy tsu tsveyt for John Zorn’s Tzadik label in 2010. They perform this program in concert, most recently at Miller’s Studio in Zurich, Switzerland.