Chutzpah! all jazzed up

Toronto performer sings Cole Porter ... in Yiddish.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

Award-winning actress, playwright and singer Theresa Tova opens this year's Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts with moments from her award-winning musical Still the Night and a selection of contemporary and traditional Yiddish and jazz songs.

Tova – who told the Bulletin that she is "really, really pleased" to be coming to Vancouver – has starred in the National American Broadway tour of Ragtime, been honored by the Geminis for her work on the television series E.N.G. and performed at the Stratford Festival. Still the Night, which chronicles her mother's heroic journey as a young partisan in the Second World War, earned four Dora awards and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for literature.

A daughter of Holocaust survivors, Tova was born in France, but grew up in Calgary. She and her family moved there when she was 18 months old. She attended the city's I. L. Peretz day school, where she said with pride that she was the Yiddish valedictorian.

Tova eventually moved to Edmonton, where she studied acting at the University of Alberta. She went to Toronto in 1978 to do her very first show and, after returning West for a couple of years after that, she relocated to Toronto in early 1980.

"Lately, I've been finding great success in contemporizing my take on their music," said Tova, referring to her grandmother's generation. "I don't treat it historically. I treat it as a great piece of music that still needs to be heard, but it needs to be heard with today's take."

The result of this approach is that Tova and her fellow musicians move between the Jewish world and the jazz world, selling out such places as Toronto's Top O' the Senator, one of the leading jazz clubs in Canada.

"We've been there three times now. The second last time, we did a four-night stand [and] we recorded it live," said Tova. So the recently released Theresa Tova Live at the Top O' the Senator starts out with "English, straight-ahead jazz ... and then slowly, about track seven, we start pulling some of the Yiddish stuff on the unsuspecting listeners, because [pause] we can," explained Tova with a laugh. "And so we do things like Cole Porter's 'Night and Day'; we start the tune in English and then we morph into Yiddish, a Yiddish translation of 'Night and Day.' It's really cool.... What's really wonderful about it when you're crossing languages like this is that it actually brings people into the sounds of the language."

Tova's enthusiasm for her craft is palpable. She was excited about the new, youthful synergy that has happened around Yiddish culture in recent years. She said she finds this development fantastic.

"I think we as Jews are reticent about sharing who we are culturally. Even though we're really big players in Broadway and film, it's very rare that you get a breakthrough film like a Schindler's List, where we actually define ourselves as filmmakers, as Jewish," said Tova, adding that a "buggaboo" of hers is that most of the composers of the great American standards were Jewish and they wrote all these great songs for Christmas and Easter, "but you name me one great one in the Chanukah canon," she challenged.

Tova has 11 concerts in the next five weeks, in five cities – Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Boston. Her group is being courted for possible concerts in Argentina and Holland, and they have booked some dates for Michigan in the fall.

In her Chutzpah! performance, Tova will be joined by pianist Mark Eisenman. The opening night is Saturday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m., in the Norman Rothstein Theatre. Tickets are $54 and are only available at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver reception.

For more information on Tova, visit www.theresatova.com.

Just clownin' around

Besides the Tova performances, there are 22 other acts to catch at the festival, many of which run more than once over the course of the 16-day event. Among the other shows being offered is Circus Gothic, a one-woman show written and performed by Jan Kudelka. It tells the true story of 28 Canadian clowns on tour with a down and out American Mudshow in the 1970s.

People who took in the award-winning The One That Got Away at last year's Chutzpah! festival will recognize Kudelka. Her performance in that play got her a Jessie Award nomination.

Circus Gothic is sponsored by NeWorld Theatre. It plays at the Second Stage Sunday, Feb. 23, 8 p.m.; Sunday, March 2, 2 p.m.; and Sunday, March 9, 6 p.m. Tickets are $14.

Relive the Renaissance

The Gerard Edery Ensemble explores the musical traditions of a cosmopolitan Renaissance civilization that reached its peak in the golden age of Spain. The ensemble's repertoire includes songs in some dozen languages, including French, Spanish, Ladino, Hebrew and Arabic. They also show an incredible diversity, performing hymns of celebration, ballads of loss, flamenco-inspired pieces and holy works of praise. Their CD, Love Songs of the Sephardim and Renaissance Spain, won the 1997 Sephardic Musical Heritage Award.

Making a special guest appearance at the ensemble's Chutzpah! performance is local clarinetist Francois Houle who has performed with the trio many times throughout North America. They take to the stage at the Norman Rothstein Theatre Sunday, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $22.

A return engagement

Vocolot is back for a return Chutzpah! engagement. The group fuses folk, jazz, classical and cantorial vocal traditions. Singing a cappella, the womens' songs affirm life and sing a vision of one world at peace.

From the San Francisco Bay area, Vocolot features Cantor Linda Hirshhorn, Ellen Robinson, Elizabeth Stuart, Jennifer Karno and Julia Bordenaro. The group takes its name from the English word vocal and the Hebrew word kolot, which means voices. Their recordings include Behold (1997) and Roots and Wings (1992).

Vocolot performs Saturday, March 1, 9 p.m., in the Norman Rothstein Theatre. Tickets are $22.

Adult and kid appeal

From Beijing to Boston and Moscow to Miami, the Robyn Helzner Trio from Washington, D.C., has celebrated the melodies of modern Israel, the folk songs of eastern Europe, the love songs of Spain and the compositions of contemporary North America. Helzner, with Dov Weitman on mandolin and Matt Holsen on bass, will perform at the Norman Rothstein Theatre Sunday, March 9, at 8 p.m.

The Trio will also perform a concert for children and families March 9, at 1 p.m., in the Norman Rothstein Theatre. Clap Your Hands blends music and storytelling. The Trio will involve the audience in singing, dancing, laughing and appreciating the Jewish heritage. The concert will feature selections from Helzner's Clap Your Hands and I Live in the City recordings.

The Robyn Helzner Trio performances are sponsored by Judy and Isaac Thau. Tickets for the evening show are $22 and Clap Your Hands is $10 per person.

16 days of Jewish fun

Chutzpah! runs from Feb. 22 to March 9 at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. Tickets for all performances – with the exception of opening night – can be purchased from the Festival box office at 604-257-0366.

The theatre, dance and music festival is dedicated to Lisa Nemetz, who passed away in 1997. Nemetz was a dancer, a lawyer, a lover of the arts and an advocate for the treatment and care of women with breast cancer.

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