The Brock House Society Big Band performs after the Jewish Seniors Alliance AGM Oct. 26. (photo from JSA)
The Brock House Society Big Band will take part in the festivities that follow the Jewish Seniors Alliance’s annual general meeting Oct. 26, 2 p.m., at Beth Israel Synagogue.
JSA is celebrating its 20th anniversary. For the last 20 years, the organization, founded by Serge Haber, has served the Jewish and general communities through its education, advocacy and peer support programs.
The Oct. 26 AGM will consist of committee reports and the election of board members, and the birthday party/reception that follows at 3 p.m. will feature live music by the Brock House Society Big Band, balloons and loot bags. There will be a late, light lunch catered by Nava, at the cost of $36/person.
The Brock House band is an 18-piece ensemble that plays a wide variety of jazz and popular music. Their repertoire includes classic tunes from Count Basie, Duke Ellington and others, Latin and jazz standards and big band arrangements of contemporary popular music.
Left to right, Tzimmes’s Saul Berson, Yona Bar Sever and Moshe Denburg perform in the Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social on Nov. 5. (photo from Heart of the City)
A festival favourite, Tzimmes, will perform at the 20th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, taking part in the Nov. 5 Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social, which closes out the 100-plus live and online events that take place at more than 40 venues over 12 days.
Presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre with the Carnegie Community Centre, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and other community partners, this milestone year of the festival – with the theme “Grounded in Community, Carrying it Forward” – starts Oct. 25.
“We have performed at DTES Heart of the City Festival on several occasions over the years,” Tzimmes founder and band leader Moshe Denburg told the Independent.
“November 2008 was the first time and, two years later, in October 2010, we performed again. We were invited a few years ago, in the fall of 2020, but couldn’t make it due to a scheduling conflict.”
In addition, said Denburg, a small group from the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), which Denburg founded, played the festival in 2011. “The repertoire was, of course, intercultural, but included klezmer and Hebraic pieces as well,” he said. “Every time we played the festival, there was a truly welcoming atmosphere, and I would like to say it is an honour to be part of the mitzvah (good deed) that Heart of the City is performing for the neediest amongst us.”
“For 20 years, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in the Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the cultural practices of the community,” notes the press release. “The festival works with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward our community’s stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences and artistic processes to illuminate pathways of resistance and resilience.” The festival’s mandate “is to promote, present and facilitate the development of artists, art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.”
The closing event at which a trio of musicians from Tzimmes will play – Denburg (lead vocal/guitar), Yona Bar Sever (lead guitar/backup vocal) and Saul Berson (clarinet/flute/saxophone) – will also feature the Barvinok Choir, Dovbush Dancers and the Vancouver Ukrainian Folk Orchestra. The concert will be opened by cultural speaker Bob Baker of the Squamish Nation and DTES resident, artist, poet and community activist Diane Wood will read “100 Years of Struggle” by the late Sandy Cameron, an historian and poet, among other things, who was very involved in the Downtown Eastside.
About what the Tzimmes trio will play at the concert, Denburg said, “The Tzimmes repertoire is always made up of Jewish music in the larger world context. So, there will be aspects of klezmer and Yiddish song (European), Ladino (Judeo-Spanish/Mediterranean), and pieces in a more Middle Eastern style as well. If anyone wants a primer on our repertoire, they can visit our YouTube page: @BigTzimmesProductions. Have a look/listen to ‘Dror Yikra,’ ‘Cuando’ and ‘Moishe’s Freylakh,’ and you’ll get an idea of what’s to come.”
The Independent last spoke with Denburg in 2021 about Tzimmes’s then-new two-CD album The Road Never Travelled. Since that interview, the group released, in 2022, a remixed and remastered version of their first album, calling it Sweeter and Hotter.
“In 2020, as we were creating our fourth album, The Road Never Travelled, I realized that there was almost enough material for a second disc, but it needed a few more pieces,” said Denburg. “Around that time, my dear friend and band mate, Yona, suggested that I try to remix our debut recording. We always felt that we were constrained by a simpler technology back in 1993, and that certain aspects of the mix could be improved – vocals could be clearer, instruments brought into better relation and so on. Looking around, I found a fine facility in Red Bank, N.J., that specialized in transferring old reel-to-reels to a digital format. The tapes of Sweet and Hot were 27 years old, but they transferred wonderfully to digital tracks.
“On the second disc of The Road Never Travelled, we included several remixed liturgical pieces from Sweet and Hot,” Denburg said, noting that the group continued the process and worked on every track of their 1993 debut album. He said, “The result, we believe, is an enhanced version of Sweet and Hot that does not compromise the original at all; in fact, we humbly submit, the result of all this work is that the sweet parts are even sweeter, and the hot stuff even hotter!”
The closing concert/social of the Heart of the City Festival – called Building Community: 20 Years of Friendship – takes place at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, with doors opening at 2 p.m. and the concert at 3 p.m. Tickets ($30/$20) are available at eventbrite.ca.
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Among the many other events taking place during Heart of the City is an exhibit of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20-year history, curated by Vancouver Moving Theatre co-founder Terry Hunter. (For more on Cooper, see jewishindependent.ca/capturing-community-spirit.)
Cooper will attend the Nov. 1, 4 p.m., opening reception in the third-floor gallery at Carnegie Community Centre. The exhibit, which runs to Nov. 30, will feature two to four photos from each of the festival’s 20 years, displayed chronologically with the festival poster for each year.
Organizers said Cooper provided guidelines for selecting the images: “simple, elegant, expressive images with energy, movement and/or emotion that represent the cultural and social diversity of the festival’s programming and people.” The exhibit also will include photos of festival participants who have passed away.
Elam Rotem, founder and director of Profeti della Quinta, which plays in Vancouver Nov. 9. (photo by Theresa Pewal Photographie)
Swiss ensemble Profeti della Quinta, directed by Elam Rotem, brings Stars of the Italian Renaissance: Monteverdi & Rossi to Vancouver Nov. 9. Part of Early Music Vancouver’s 2023/24 season, the concert takes place at Christ Church Cathedral.
“Salomone Rossi and Claudio Monteverdi are two composers we like very much,” Rotem told the Independent. “We find the fact that they were colleagues – they played together as instrumentalists and collaborated as composers – very interesting. Even more interesting is the fact that the Jewish singers and musicians in Mantua had this double musical life, where sometimes they sang madrigals and participated in the opera productions at the court (collaborating with Monteverdi and other non-Jewish musicians) and, at other times they sang Hebrew polyphony in the synagogue.
“In this program,” said Rotem, “we follow in the footsteps of those Jewish musicians from Mantua who, unlike Jews in other places (in Italy or elsewhere), participated in the arts. This particular constellation allowed Salomone Rossi to develop his polyphonic music for the synagogue, and it is also the reason why, despite the hopes of Rossi and his followers, this tradition never took off elsewhere.”
Rotem – who was born in Sdot Yam, Israel – has a bachelor’s in harpsichord from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and he came to Basel, Switzerland, at the end of 2008 to specialize in early music at Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, from where he received his doctorate in a joint program with the University of Würzburg, in Germany. His PhD thesis was on early basso continuo practice.
“Throughout the 16th century, music was primarily polyphonic – typically composed of four to five parts. Towards the end of the century,” he explained, “new ideas led to the development of a new technique in which only two parts were composed: a vocal part and a basso continuo part – an instrumental bass line on which the player had to fill in the harmonies above it. The possibility of having only one singing voice allowed a much more direct and expressive communication with the audience and played an important role in the creation of early operas. The difference between the older polyphony and the new monodic style is so great that it changed the course of music history, and some examples of this will be heard in our concert.”
The origins of Profeti della Quinta go back to Rotem’s studies at Kibbutz Kabri High School, where he organized a vocal quintet with fellow students. Rotem is also a singer.
“I started Profeti in the corridors of my high school, wherever we could find some church-like acoustics” he said, “but the group only became professional after we won the York Early Music Competition in 2011.”
The ensemble now performs throughout Europe, North America, Israel and elsewhere. Focusing on the vocal repertoire of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the group “aims to create vivid and expressive performances for audiences today while, at the same time, considering period performance practices.”
About how he approaches this dual goal, Rotem said, “First and foremost, I’m interested in music from the period that I find interesting and beautiful. Then, I’m also interested in how it was performed and in what context – and, for that, you have to research and try things out. For example, we sing from (copies of) original partbooks and not from modern scores, so each singer has only his or her own line. This makes listening and making music very different. Then we also try to understand the music better. Finding out the motivations behind the decisions of composers, we feel that we can deliver their music better.”
In response to a question about how Rossi’s music is perceived with regard to its Jewishness – including his liturgical compositions – Rotem said, “It depends on what people mean by ‘Jewish music.’ If, for some people, Jewish music means Eastern European klezmer music, then Rossi’s music doesn’t sound Jewish. Rossi’s music is written in the language of his time – what we can categorize (if we must) as late Renaissance Italian style. If we compare the music of his prayers, for example, with the contemporary love madrigals (also his own), we see that the prayers are more solemn and simpler. But this is hardly surprising – the way composers created their music was based on the text, and so a heart-wrenching madrigal text would be composed in a very different way than a psalm praising the Lord. Another way to look at Rossi’s prayers is not so much as pieces of music in the normal sense, but simply the text of the prayers served on a plate of harmony – with the goal of elevating and glorifying the prayer.”
Joining Rotem (bass vocals, harpsichord and musical direction) from Profeti della Quinta on the Western Canadian tour that will take the musicians to Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, are Doron Schleifer (countertenor), Andrea Gavagnin (countertenor), Lior Leibovici (tenor), Loïc Paulin (tenor) and Ori Harmelin (chitarrone, which is a kind of lute). After the concert in Vancouver, there will be a talk and Q&A with Rotem, hosted by Suzie LeBlanc, artistic and executive director of Early Music Vancouver.
For tickets to the performance on Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m., at Christ Church Cathedral, visit earlymusic.bc.ca.
Israeli pianist Ariel Lanyi performs in Vancouver March 3. (photo by Kaupo Kikkas)
Israeli pianist Ariel Lanyi will make his Canadian debut on March 3, 3 p.m., at the Vancouver Playhouse in a concert presented by the Vancouver Recital Society.
Born in Jerusalem in 1997, Lanyi is now based in London, England, having recently completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2023, he received the Prix Serdanag, a Swiss prize awarded by Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, and was nominated as a Rising Star Artist by Classic FM. In 2021, he won third prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition and was a prize winner in both the Young Classical Artists Trust YCAT (London) and Concert Artists Guild (New York) International Auditions. Also in 2021, Linn Records released Lanyi’s recording of music by Schubert, with other releases also planned. Lanyi’s 2021 Virtually VRS recorded performance can be viewed on the Vancouver Recital Society’s YouTube channel.
Lanyi has appeared with orchestras in Israel, the United Kingdom, Argentina and the United States, and highlights include playing with the Israel Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the latter of which he will return to this season for Mozart K503. Other notable future engagements include his debut with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Grafenegg Festival, a return to Australia at the Sanguine Estate Music Festival, followed by a tour to China, and the Stars & Rising Stars concert series in Munich.
An avid chamber musician, Lanyi has collaborated with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Concertgebouw Amsterdam, as well as with musicians such as Maria João Pires, Marina Piccinini, Charles Neidich and Torleif Thedéen. He also recorded with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg under the auspices of the Orpheum Stifftung, as part of their Next Generation Mozart Soloist series, and gave recitals at the Kissinger Sommer, Fundaçion Juan March in Madrid, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Lanyi’s March 3 performance in Vancouver will feature Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, Frédéric Chopin’s Mazurkas, Op. 59, and Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61, as well as Max Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach, Op. 81. The concert will be followed by a talkback session. For tickets, visit vanrecital.com.
Nani Noam Vazana performs at the Rothstein Theatre Nov. 11 as part of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival. (photo from NaniMusic.com/ProLadino)
Gracing the cover of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival guide and posters is Nani Noam Vazana. The Amsterdam-based musician is one of the only artists in the world writing and performing new songs in Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish. The JI spoke with her when she last came to Vancouver, in 2017, and did so again, ahead of her Nov. 11 Chutzpah! show at the Rothstein Theatre.
“The concert in Vancouver is a part of my international Ke Haber tour that will take me through 15 countries,” said Vazana. One of the highlights of the tour will be a concert at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, she said, “where I’ll have the honour of documenting my new Ladino songs for libraries and universities all over the world and make them available for Ladino research.”
The tour features mostly songs from Ke Haber but will also include “some traditional Sephardic songs and surprise covers – different to each show!” she said.
Ke Haber incorporates a millennial’s perspective – hers – into the writing of songs “in an old, almost extinct language,” she said, explaining that “Ladino is a language of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages (Spain and Portugal of our days). My grandmother has roots in Portugal and she and her family sailed to Morocco from Porto in the 1400s. That’s where she grew up and where my parents were also born.
“In the ’50s, both my parents’ families immigrated to Israel and my father wanted to leave the past behind so he actually forbade us to speak Ladino at home,” she continued. “The only times I had contact with the language was when I was left alone with my grandmother. It was the language of witchcraft and mystery because she would only use it to speak to me in secret and tell me magical fairy tales that I actually thought she made up herself, because nobody else knew them. We sang songs in the kitchen while cooking, and it was all seeping in through the senses, very inviting and very curious.”
Vazana’s grandmother passed away when she was 12 years old.
“One of my first memories is of me and my Nona (Grandma) sitting at the kitchen table, peeling beans and singing ‘Los Guisados De La Berendjena,’ a song about seven recipes for eggplants. She hardly spoke Hebrew and my father forbade us to speak Ladino…. But, it seems, you carry this love subconsciously in you wherever you go, because, 15 years after my Nona passed away, I visited Morocco for the first time and heard people on the street singing the same lullaby she used to sing to me when I was a little girl. All of a sudden, those forgotten kitchen songs came alive and I started a long journey searching for songs and melodies that led me to release my traditional Ladino album Andalusian Brew. Sometimes, all it takes is just a sound or a scent and you’re transported to a life you’ve forgotten.”
After performing traditional repertoire for a few years, Vazana felt a yearning to write her own songs, and she dove into an exploration of the language. “I visited a scholar in Leiden, who showed me a lot of texts at an ancient Jewish library, but I wanted more,” she said. “So, I dug deep into medieval poetry and started learning the rhythm of the stanzas. Based on existing rhythmical formations, I started writing my own lyrics in Ladino, concerning questions we ask ourselves today, and, I must admit, I found a lot of correlation between where we are now and the medieval Iberian population.”
Vazani described Ke Haber as “an album of new songs that sound old, or maybe the other way around.”
“There are songs in the album that speak about female empowerment, like my song ‘No Kero Madre,’ a mother-daughter dialogue about the will to break free from the arranged marriage tradition and marry out of love,” she explained. “What a lot of people don’t know about Ladino is that it is a matriarchal language, so the relationship between mother and daughter is put on a pedestal, as the highest form of love in existence.
“In my song ‘Sin Dingun Hijo Varon,’ I describe the transformation of a transgender teenage girl who wants to be recognized as a boy. The father tries to kick her out of the house but the mother steps up and accepts her child as a boy.
“My song ‘Una Segunda Piel’ is about a Sephardic retirement ritual where your family and friends sow around you the shroud of the dead! You lie down in a cocoon, meditate and think about the troubles you want to leave behind. When the cloth is done [with], it goes into the cupboard, symbolizing all your troubles, and you emerge from it as if shedding your skin. That’s why the title is ‘Una Segunda Piel,’ which means ‘A Second Skin.’
“For my song ‘El Gacela,’” she said, “I composed music to an ancient text by Shmuel Hanagid, which is a love poem between two men. When the song was published, some people claimed that I was ‘outing’ the Jewish saint, but I think if he already published this work, he was out in the first place.”
The recording of Ke Haber, which started in London, England, in 2020, was complicated by COVID.
“I had to figure out a creative way to finalize the project, so we started recording remotely,” she said. “That’s really hard, because programs like Zoom have latency, so you can’t really record with other musicians simultaneously. We had to overdub – can you imagine playing music when the band is not in the same room? We all came to the studio whenever we were able to travel from Columbia, Chile, the Canary Islands, Bosnia, Israel, India, the Netherlands and Poland! That’s why the album is also a colourful tapestry of musical traditions and cultural aspiration from all over the world.”
While COVID was a quiet time touring-wise, “it was also a turmoil of creativity,” said Vazani, “because I just couldn’t sit still at home and wait for the world to pass by. So, I broadcasted house concerts every week, learned to edit video and record sound, which led to facilitating multicam broadcasts for other artists, such as the West East Orchestra.
“I also started doing voiceover gigs, overdubbing cartoon characters for animation and narration for documentaries and commercials. I also dabbled in emceeing when hosting online events and I hosted my own weekly podcast, interviewing [professionals] from the music industry about tips for emerging musicians.”
She received offers from music colleges and music industry conventions worldwide and hosted masterclasses and panel discussions for more than 30 institutions. “Eventually,” she said, “I was commissioned by the Dutch national TV broadcast NPO to create and host my own television series that will start airing in 2024.”
In addition to all that, Vazani teaches at the London Performing Academy of Music and the Jerusalem Music Academy, and is chair of the Amsterdam Artist Collective. She is also a guest lecturer at Codarts University, Rotterdam.
She enjoys being active – “for the mind and the soul to stay agile, we gotta train them,” she said. “This is my mental gym.”
And she’s not that interested in achievements, she said, though she has garnered several awards. “I am interested in being on the road as much as possible with my music,” she said. “This translates in my mind into happiness, and that’s not a fleeting experience, it’s a state of existence.”
To support Vazani’s music and receive content in return – all the music she has released, for example, and exclusive meet-and-greet sessions – readers can join her music family at nanimusic.com/family. For tickets to her performance at Chutzpah! and the whole festival lineup, visit chutzpahfestival.com. The festival runs Nov. 2-23.
From left to right: Leslie Rosen, Toby Rubin, Tammy Klass and Marilyn Berger dance to the music of singer and pianist Miriam Davidson. (photo from JSA)
The last session of the Jewish Seniors Alliance-Snider Foundation Empowerment 2022-23 season was held on June 26 at Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Richmond. It featured Miriam Davidson playing and singing show tunes, and people joined in and even danced.
The event was co-sponsored by JSA, Kehila Society’s Seniors Program and Beth Tikvah. Attendees were treated to a BBQ lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs and veggie dogs with all the trimmings. More than 60 seniors from around the Lower Mainland attended.
The crowd was welcomed by Toby Rubin, the coordinator of the Kehila program. She explained that Lester Soo, the scheduled entertainer, was unable to perform, but that Davidson, a pianist and vocalist, was able to step in.
Davidson began with some songs from The Sound of Music that were very familiar to the audience, and she encouraged everyone to sing along. The program included such tunes as “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Only a Paper Moon.” She played “Memory” from the musical Cats and a request for Abba’s “Dancing Queen” had the audience swaying and waving their arms in time to the music. There was even a bit of dancing.
The concert ended with “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles.
The afternoon wrapped up with greetings from Tammi Belfer, president of the JSA, and a thank you to Davidson, who was wonderful.
Shanie Levin is a Jewish Seniors Alliance Life Governor. She is also on the editorial committee of Senior Line magazine.
The Oot n’ Oots band helps launch Mission Folk Music Festival. (photo from Mission Folk Music Festival)
Family band the Oot n’ Oots helps kick off the Mission Folk Music Festival on July 21, as part of the main-stage lineup that opens the weekend of concerts and workshops. Several other Jewish community members are also participating over the weekend, including Boris Sichon, Jesse Waldman and Abigail Lapell, who helps close out the annual event on the evening of July 23.
The theme of this year’s festival builds on last year’s, said artistic director Michelle Demers Shaevitz, also a member of the Jewish community.
“In 2022,” she said, “I programmed a festival that reflected the experience of homecoming, the coming back together of our community, our festival family. This year, I’m digging into the process and ideas of connection and reconnection, as we move through our experiences beyond that initial homecoming and return to the festival. For me, the idea of reconnection speaks to getting to know who we are as a community post-pandemic and how we have changed/emerged as a result of our experiences.
“I was drawn to our 2023 artists through the ways they express their connection to their homelands, their languages, their heritage and cultures, and musical traditions,” she continued. “It’s how Okan celebrates their roots to their homeland of Cuba and her languages and stories, while Terra Spencer sings of the Maritime landscapes and communities around her.
“It could be reconnecting to language, as Cedric Watson and Jourdan Thibidoux explore their roots in the Creole community based in Louisiana alongside Wesli, who sings in his Haitian Creole of home and in French from his newly adopted community in Quebec.
“It’s the ways that Leonard Sumner and Twin Flames sing their connections to their heritage or how Alysha Brilla presents her identity in her songs.”
And, she said, it’s how the Jewish musicians weave their Jewishness into their stories and songs.
Sichon, a classically trained percussionist, plays more than 400 different instruments from around the world, many of which would send most of us to the internet to find out what they are, such as mayuri, zurna and agogo bells. He can also make music from wrenches, plastic containers, kitchen bowls and even rocks – basically, anything. His TikTok videos are quite entertaining and mind-broadening. It’s easy to see why he is in demand for school and other educational workshops. He told the Independent he is currently “in the process of preparing a new program with an accent on voice and wind instruments.”
“I love to perform for kids,” he said. “It gives them an opportunity to travel around the world with exotic musical instruments.”
In performances, Sichon sings songs about “love, friendship and freedom [in] Ukrainian, Gypsy, Russian and Yiddish.” He also plays klezmer, and has taken part in the International Klezmer Festival in Jerusalem for many years. He has played at and collaborated with the Mission folk fest many times and, at this year’s festival, he takes part in a Sunday afternoon session, called Global Routes, with Dongyang Gozupa and Robin Layne & the Rhythm Makers.
Earlier that Sunday afternoon, Waldman takes to the stage as well. A blues and folk artist, the Independent spoke with him ahead of his participation in the 2019 festival (jewishindependent.ca/blues-klezmer-at-mission). A couple of years ago, he shared more about himself and the importance of family in a piece for the JI about being inspired by his great-grandmother, Adele Waldman, to reimagine the Yiddish song “Papirosen” (jewishindependent.ca/a-great-grandmothers-song).
Making her debut at the Mission Folk Music Festival is Lapell, with a shared session on Saturday (with Alysha Brilla) and on Sunday (with Terra Spencer), as well as being part of the festival closing concert. She said “there’s so much great music on the lineup – personally, I’m especially excited for the workshop stages, to have a chance to collaborate with and get inspired by artists from across Canada and beyond.”
Based in Toronto, Lapell’s latest album, Stolen Time, which came out last year, earned her a 2023 Canadian Folk Music Award for English songwriter of the year. She was similarly recognized in 2020 for her album Getaway and she received a CFMA for contemporary album of the year in 2017 for Hide Nor Hair.
“I’m always trying to challenge myself as a writer and collaborator,” she said. “I’ve had the chance to work with so many great players and personnel on these albums and I think it’s really helped me grow from one project to the next.”
Lapell has always sung.
“Singing and writing songs is very intuitive to me and definitely a big source of comfort and community,” she said. “Ultimately, I think it’s such a primal thing, singing and sharing music – for me, it’s a way of connecting with myself, with nature and with the world at large.”
Her Jewishness finds its way into her work subtly.
“I find my writing is infused with a lot of biblical and natural imagery,” she said. “I’m very drawn to stylized, sometimes repetitive language, whether prayerful or playful or both. I was raised in a religious Jewish family, and I think there’s a reverent spirit to my music – and sometimes a touch of gentle dissonance or wry humour – that reflects some of the Hebrew and Yiddish traditions I grew up with.”
For the Oot n’ Oots – 16-year-old Ruthie Cipes (voice, ukulele) with her dad Ezra (voice, guitar, keys) and uncles Ari (voice, guitar, keys), Gabe (voice, bass) and Matthew (voice, drums) – Judaism and Jewish community are important parts of their lives, but don’t necessarily influence their music.
“We’re grateful for the wisdom of our ancestors and the culture bestowed since Abraham,” wrote Ezra and Ari in an email interview with the Independent. “It’s a great gift that makes our lives rich and meaningful. We’re members of the Okanagan Jewish Community and supporters of Chabad Okanagan.”
The family lives in Kelowna.
“Our parents moved us from Westchester County in New York to Kelowna, B.C., in 1987,” said the brothers. “They wanted to get off the money-go-round and be farmers living in connection with the earth. They ended up founding Summerhill Estate Winery.”
The Oot n’ Oots was formed in 2007, when Ruthie was born, “but it really got going in 2015 once Ruth joined the band. We released our first album in 2016, although it was mostly recorded back in 2007. Then we made two more albums after our elder brother Matthew joined the band on drums.”
The group is currently recording their fourth album. Their third album, Ponderosa Bunchgrass and the Golden Rule, was nominated for a 2023 CFMA for children’s album of the year and it also garnered a 2022 Juno Award nomination – they were named Children’s Artist of the Year at the 2022 Western Canadian Music Awards.
“We write songs to make each other laugh and to inspire each other. That’s what we’ve always done and it’s what we continue to do,” said the brothers. “It’s a practice that’s ongoing. We want it to continue to be meaningful as we all grow.”
While the awards may refer to children’s music, the Oot n’ Oots describe their music as “all generations together music.”
“That’s the sweet spot for us – when it’s toddlers, teenagers, parents and grandparents all on the dancefloor together,” said Ezra and Ari. “We have a couple of other musical projects that we do, but the Oot n’ Oots is our focus because it seems to provide the most tangible value, and it feels really good to bring that energy of joy to the world.”
In addition to the festival opener, the Oot n’ Oots play a few sessions with other musicians over the weekend, which takes place at Fraser River Heritage Park. The festival includes food and artisan market vendors, as well as a licensed bistro, and attendees can choose to camp in the park for an additional fee. For the full lineup and tickets, visit missionfolkmusicfestival.ca.
Perry Ehrlich’s ShowStoppers at Jack Poole Plaza (photos by David P. Feng)
Perry Ehrlich’s ShowStoppers performed at Jack Poole Plaza on Canada Day – it was Ehrlich’s 29th year celebrating Canada Day at Canada Place.
ShowStoppers is a glee troupe that performs in concert, on radio and television, and at galas, awards shows, conventions, corporate and charitable events. Previous shows include with Barry Manilow and Eric Church at Rogers Arena; with the group Foreigner at various venues; at the Pacific National Exhibition; on the Variety Club Telethon; and singing the national anthems at Vancouver Canucks games. The troupe’s repertoire includes everything from Motown and disco medleys to Canadian favourites and pop songs like “Let’s Get Loud” and “Shut Up and Dance.”
Screenshot from the video for the song “Medicine,” made by Gigi Ben Artzi, featuring Yonatan Gat and the Eastern Medicine Singers. “Medicine” comes off Gat’s album Universalists.
You never know when a life-changing moment will happen. For musician Yonatan Gat and members of the Eastern Medicine Singers, a chance encounter at the 2017 South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival in Austin, Tex., has led to a unique continuing collaboration that melds experimental and powwow music in a way that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary, energizing and hypnotic.
Fans of Gat and the Medicine Singers will be happy to know they are performing at this year’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival, which runs July 14-16 at Jericho Beach Park. They will be joined by Daniel Monkman (Zoon), an experimental Anishinaabe musician from Toronto (Tkaronto), and local oud player and guitarist Gord Grdina, who also mixes multiple musical styles. For newcomers to Medicine Singers’ music, definitely go down the internet rabbit hole. Chances are that you’ll want the in-person experience, to be immersed in the sound.
The Eastern Medicine Singers are an Algonquin drum group from Rhode Island “dedicated to keeping the eastern woodlands American Indian culture alive.” They sing and drum in the language of Massachuset and Wampanoag dialect, and have produced several CDs together. To differentiate from their traditional powwow style, they call themselves Medicine Singers for collaborative projects with musicians of other traditions, like Gat. Their debut full-length album in this capacity is the self-titled Medicine Singers, which came out in 2022 on Stone Tapes, a sub-label of Joyful Noise, and Mothland in Canada.
“The result is a spellbinding musical experience, cycling through a kaleidoscope of sounds, from psychedelic punk to spiritual jazz and electronic music,” reads the description on Joyful Noise’s website. “But the genre-smashing album remains firmly rooted in the intense physical power of the powwow drum and the Medicine Singers’ connection to their ancestral music, creating a daring and ambitious record that celebrates tradition, while boldly breaking away from its restrictions or, in the words of Medicine Singers’ leader Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson: ‘These two cultures can work together, and blend together, to show people how we can work together and make something beautiful.’”
Gat is accustomed to these kinds of partnerships and musical innovation. In Israel, he was part of the punk band Monotonix. In the United States, he has released a few full-length albums, each more varied than the last, with the latest being American Quartet (Stone Tapes, 2022), described as a “punk slash-and-burn reimagining of one of the defining works of the Western classical canon – Antonín Dvořák’s legendary string quartet – written while Dvořák was, like Gat, an expatriate living in New York City.”
A good place to start your exploration of Gat and the Medicine Singers is by watching the video of the 2018 track “Medicine,” which was included on Gat’s second album, Universalists (Joyful Noise, 2018). The fruit of an impromptu recording session, this release caught a larger public’s imagination and the rest, to be cliché, is history – yet continues to be groundbreaking.
The Jewish Independent had the chance to talk with Gat via email this week.
JI: What was it about the Medicine Singers’ performance/repertoire at SXSW 2017 that so mesmerized you?
YG: I was playing a show in a club during SXSW and Eastern Medicine Singers were playing outside. I didn’t know them personally and my band were watching them outside just before we went on. I thought their style (six people powerfully hitting a drum and singing call-and-response vocals) could mesh well with my trio and, also, just like them, we played on the floor in the middle of the audience. So, after they were done playing, I invited them to sit in with us. They famously said no at first and then changed their mind after they heard our music.
Our improvisation style leaves a lot of room for new musicians to join and freely do their thing. I think Eastern Medicine Singers noticed that, too, and when they joined us – it quickly became one of the most incredible shows we’ve ever played. The audience was feeling that as well. When I looked up, I noticed everyone in the crowd was crying, and that’s how our collaboration began, and we’ve been touring nonstop around the world since 2017.
JI: In an interview, you talked about taking piano lessons as a kid and, even then, improvising. What do you love about improvising?
YG: I took piano lessons as a kid but I never cared about learning to read sheet music. I just wanted to improvise. At some point, I started playing bass, but when we did Monotonix, we wanted a trio of guitar-drums-vocals, so I moved to a 77 Fender Mustang tuned two tones down to C with bass strings running through a custom-made humbucker pickup to make it sound more low-endy. I learned to play the harmony on the open strings while doing the lead on the highs.
We played 1,000 shows that way with Monotonix and I discovered myself as a guitarist along the way. I never practised or cared about technique, but being the only instrument except drums made me work hard and grow as a player. When I started my own band, I was able to build it around improvisation, which helped me learn even more about myself as a musician and human. Improvisation doesn’t have to be confined to jazz, long solos or anything like that – it’s more a way to live life, to respond to the world around you, get to know yourself better every night.
JI: From where do you draw inspiration for your compositions?
YG: When we record, we like to create a zone that’s radically free, where it’s all about the musician’s self-expression as it relates to the collective and we just let the tapes roll and have fun with it. Our studio days are very fun and wild and free. We also record other situations – practices, soundchecks, hangs. Sometimes, we record in some of the best or most interesting studios in the world, sometimes we record on iPhones or broken tape machines someone left behind.
It doesn’t matter what it is, we just gather material (usually hours of music) and then the process of editing begins, which is when the “composition” happens. In that way, most of the writing is actually the editing. Everything else is just about having a good time and making sure every musician gets documented the way they envisioned.
JI: You have played in Vancouver before. What are you most looking forward to on this upcoming visit?
YG: I was always lucky to play inspiring shows in Vancouver. My first time in town was a wild DIY punk show in a place called Emergency Room back in ’08. People were going crazy, falling on the band (we were playing on the floor). That vibe just continued to Biltmore Cabaret, where we played so many times after that. Just a sweaty haze with everyone losing their minds and melting into one another.
The last time I was in town was for Vancouver Jazz Fest back in 2019 with Medicine Singers. That was fun. I’m not used to playing jazz fests (they probably think we’re too loud or something) but it was so cool to play to an audience that was following the instrumental parts and appreciating the playing that comes with the freedom and energy.
Vancouver Folk will be a special one for sure. We don’t often play on the floor nowadays, but Medicine Singers transcend the stage. This show really creates a kind of connection between audience and musicians I’ve never seen before. It still has all the magic we discovered in 2017, the first time we played together.
My experience working and learning from Medicine Singers led us to start a label together, Stone Tapes, which is more like a community of musicians, or a collective. I think that represents what we do in the best way possible, and I’m looking forward to coming back to Vancouver and backing Medicine Singers along with other musicians from that collective.
For the full Vancouver Folk Music Festival lineup and tickets, visit thefestival.bc.ca.
The Vancouver Men’s Chorus “brings such an effervescent joy to the shows and the spring season in particular is a big party for the chorus and audience alike.” (photo by Mark Burnham Photography)
The Vancouver Men’s Chorus (VMC) Sizzlin’ Summer concert promises to be a lively and entertaining experience.
“The VMC is more than just your average choral concert – we have the chops to pull off some pretty complex vocal arrangements, but we also like to mix that up with pure upbeat fun,” said Jewish community member Dr. David Rothwell, who is one of the choreographers of the show, which sees several performances June 9-17 at Performance Works on Granville Island. “The group brings such an effervescent joy to the shows, and the spring season in particular is a big party for the chorus and audience alike,” he said. “Whether it’s pulling out some disco moves for a nostalgic trip to ABBA’s heyday, or donning umbrellas after a hairy forecast from the Weather Girls, the choreography put together by myself and my fellow choreographers (Randy Romero and Jason Yau) helps tell the story of our music and elevates that entertainment factor even higher. We even get the entire chorus to join along in their own way.”
Humphrey Tam, VMC’s vice-president of marketing and communications, as well as a singer in the choir, shared a sneak peek at the repertoire.
“In Sizzlin’ Summer,” he said, “we have music ranging from your pop classics like ‘The Raining Men,’ ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,’ ‘Summer Breeze,’ to new hits like ‘Summer Time Sadness’ by Lana Del Rey and ‘New Rules’ by Dua Lipa, to the world première performance of ‘Ocean Songs’ by composer Gerry Ryan (former arranger and first tenor of the VMC) who, sadly, passed away few years ago.”
Conducting Sizzlin’ Summer will be VMC artistic director Willi Zwozdesky, who has been with the chorus since its inception; resident accompanist Dr. Stephen Smith has been with the VMC since the 1990s.
“Both of them are instrumental in the success of the Vancouver Men’s Chorus,” said Tam. “In 2021, we expanded our musical team to include an assistant conductor, David Buchan, who brought in another layer to our sound. On top of that, we have a full orchestra band in our concerts!”
The chorus rehearses every Wednesday, except during July and August, when they take a break; there are also extra rehearsals on Sundays a month or two before a concert.
While VMC is an audition-required group, Tam said the “singers are a mix of people with tons of background in music and theatre to someone who has no previous musical experience. We welcome everyone to audition and, even if you can’t sing, there are plenty of opportunities to join the chorus as a volunteer to help out with productions.” He said he was, before joining the chorus, “one of those who had no musical background except for playing the clarinet for one year back in Grade 8.”
Rothwell, who used to teach dance before moving to Canada from Australia, is an animator by trade, so “movement is my bread and butter, whether on the stage or the screen,” he said.
“After moving to Vancouver in 2018 with my husband, we saw the VMC performing their hearts out in the annual Pride Parade. We were quick to reach out to see if they were taking new members and, five years later, we’re basically part of the furniture!” said Rothwell. “We both grew up immersed in music, and it’s been a perfect way to pursue our interests and build a network of vibrant, talented friends in Vancouver’s queer community.”
About Jewish community, Rothwell said, “My mum reconnected with our family’s Jewish roots when I was a teen, so while I wasn’t immersed in that side of my heritage until that point, I’ve grown to recognize and appreciate the tenacity, humour and joie de vivre that I feel is ingrained in the Jewish spirit, including my own. These days, I’ll gladly join a seder and keep everyone’s cups full to the brim!”
For VMC member Dr. Etienne Melese, much of his connection to Judaism also came from his mother. “When I was young,” he shared, “she taught me about all the Jewish traditions, holidays, and growing up in New York helped, too.”
Proud of being Jewish, he said, “I feel the history deeply.” While Melese’s paternal grandfather survived the Holocaust, other members of his family did not. “We still visit their memorial in Paris (Mémorial de la Shoah) every time we visit, and I think about the courage it took survivors to live through that time,” he said.
Melese, who earned his PhD in immunology from the University of British Columbia and is currently working in biotech on designing new therapeutics for diseases such as cancer, said, “I came to the Vancouver Men’s Chorus because I wanted the opportunity to sing again. I had spent six-plus years doing my PhD and, during that time, had not been singing in a choir, which I used to enjoy so much! Also, the community – I wanted to expand my network of friends.”
Melese has been in many choirs over the years. What draws him to singing, he said, is “being able to express yourself. I find, through music, I am able to access so many feelings that are hard to just put into words…. I find there is an energy to choirs that can really change your outlook that day.”
Knowing that such benefits can come from choral singing, the Vancouver Men’s Chorus remained active during the pandemic, albeit in different ways.
“It was a very difficult time for the chorus,” said Tam. “From a choir point of view, not being able to sing as a group and perform was a huge loss to us; but, on top of all things, the VMC is a huge support group for our members, it’s a huge chosen family. Every week when we meet, we share our stories and we socialize. Not having that bonding time with each other definitely was strange and hard for some of us. Luckily, despite not being able to sing together, we still continued to have Zoom activities throughout the entire 2020 and 2021, and we recorded two digital concerts to keep doing what we love. Starting September 2021, we rehearsed together again but with masks and social distancing, and performed our first in-person concert in two years with Making Spirits Bright 2021 (also with masks on). Thinking back, I really don’t know how we did that.”
The VMC is a diverse and inclusive group, with members ranging from 18 to 70+ years old, said Tam. “We have open rehearsals every September and January for anyone to come join us at our rehearsals and sing with us,” he said. “From there, they can see if we are a good fit for them and sign up for an audition.”
Rothwell is keen for more people to experience the choir. “In addition to our spring season in June, the VMC also is well underway in preparing for our December season, Making Spirits Bright,” he said. “As always, our music selection committee makes sure to include songs for all holidays of the season; celebrating Hanukkah continues to be a mainstay of our setlist, along with the winter solstice and more. We’re gearing up for another great show this December, so I’d also encourage readers to keep an eye out for our next show, Cheers!, later this year.”
But, returning to Sizzlin’ Summer, Melese shared his favourite song: “‘The Summer Nights,’ a play on Grease, so fun!”