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Tag: Cape Breton

Ancient-modern music

Ancient-modern music

Artist-in-residence David Greenberg has multiple performances at this year’s Vancouver Bach Festival: Scottish Baroque and Other Traditions. (photo by J.B. Millot)

Violinist David Greenberg teaches a course called Cape Breton-Baroque Integration, which is “devoted to creating living moments on the violin through the art of ‘keeping it swirly.’” He keeps it swirly by a range of techniques, but the intangible part derives from his love of Baroque and Cape Breton music.

Greenberg is co-artist-in-residence at Early Music Vancouver this year along with David McGuinness, and the pair will play in a few performances as part of this summer’s Vancouver Bach Festival: Scottish Baroque and Other Traditions, which takes place July 26 to Aug. 6 at various venues in Vancouver.

Early Music Vancouver’s artists-in-residence program started last summer, with Cree-Métis Two-Spirit baritone Jonathon Adams. The program was initiated by EMV artistic and executive director Suzie LeBlanc “to honour Canada’s diverse heritages while at the same time exploring the convergences between ‘world music’ and early music.” Greenberg came to be an artist-in-residence through his connection to LeBlanc, who is an interdisciplinary artist – he has performed with her many times over the years.

“Many of those collaborations involved a degree of integration between folk and Baroque music,” Greenberg told the Independent. “Often, those collaborations included David McGuinness, who is also a close friend and colleague from Glasgow, a scholar of 18th-century Scottish music, a brilliant musician on various keyboard instruments and the founder and director of Concerto Caledonia.

“David and I have worked together for over 20 years,” said Greenberg, “mostly on projects that involve some degree of Baroque-traditional stylistic integration. Suzie asked David and me to be co-artists-in-residence for the 2022 festival since this year’s theme is the integration of Baroque and Scottish traditional music.

“Over the two-week festival … David and I will perform solo, chamber and orchestral concerts. We will also coach young musicians and perform with BOMP (Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Program) as part of our activities.”

Greenberg was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Maryland. He lived in Canada for 30 years, but is currently living in Corvallis, Ore.

A graduate of Indiana University’s Early Music Institute, he has performed, taught and recorded in multiple places around the world, but mainly in North America and Western Europe. In addition to LeBlanc, he has performed with more than a dozen groups and performers, and been a guest soloist and/or director with several orchestras. Between these collaborations and his own ensemble Puirt a Baroque (pronounced poorsht-a-baroque, and meaning tunes from the Baroque), he has recorded more than 80 CDs. As well, he is a composer and arranger, and he co-authored Traditional Celtic Violin Music of Cape Breton: The DunGreen Collection with Kate Dunlay.

“I started playing at age 4, dabbled in both classical music and traditional folk fiddle as a kid, went to conservatory and got depressed, switched over to Early Music performance, which suited my temperament better, and joined Tafelmusik (Toronto-based Baroque orchestra) for a decade in the ’90s,” said Greenberg.

“Alongside my Baroque playing, I dove into learning the Cape Breton fiddle style, started a few bands, worked with many colleagues around the world…. The combination of the Baroque and Cape Breton musical languages is where my sense of 18th-century Scottish violin music comes from. Italian and Scottish composers are connected by way of some Italians living and working in Scotland in the 18th century, resulting in an inevitable mixing of the styles, though to what degree is a matter of opinion.”

He said the fun thing about the Baroque and Cape Breton styles “is how their esthetic hierarchies are totally different. So that means they work as effective comic relief for each other! Cape Breton music is basically the continued, naturally evolving, living tradition of 18th-century Scottish Highland fiddling. A strange fact is that Baroque music was popular in Scotland about 50 years beyond when it died out in continental Europe. That means that the Scottish traditional music and Scottish Baroque music coexisted side-by-side in 18th-century Scotland, including many examples of music that lie somewhere between the two styles.”

Greenberg plays a Baroque-style violin made in 2000 by Masa Inokuchi in Toronto. He said, “Cape Breton music is played on a modern fiddle these days, but it works on a Baroque fiddle within the appropriate context.”

And as for a little more context on Greenberg and his musical range, he shared, “My mom has always loved singing Yiddish songs and accompanying herself on the piano. I enjoy backing her up on fiddle when I visit her.”

For tickets go to the Vancouver Bach Festival, visit earlymusic.bc.ca.

Format ImagePosted on June 24, 2022June 22, 2022Author Cynthia RamsayCategories MusicTags Cape Breton, David Greenberg, Early Music Vancouver, EMV, Scottish Baroque, Vancouver Bach Festival, violin
Looking for Cape Breton Jews

Looking for Cape Breton Jews

The former Congregation Sons of Israel in Glace Bay. In 1902, the structure was the first purpose-built synagogue in Nova Scotia. It permanently closed in July 2010. To the left of it is what was the Talmud Torah community centre, also now closed. This was the location of the Hebrew school and functions like bar mitzvahs and wedding dinners. (photo by Abebenjoe via commons.wikimedia.org)

PhD candidate Ely Rosenblum is looking for former Cape Breton Jews to interview as part of a research project called Diversity Cape Breton.

The 26-year-old University of Cambridge student is assisting Cape Breton University professor Marcia Ostashewski with a research project that investigates ethnocultural communities, including the Jewish community.

Rosenblum explained that, while his PhD focuses on cultural musicology, he has a background in folklore and ethnographic study. He met Ostashewski, the Nova Scotia university’s Canada Research Chair in Communities and Cultures, and became involved in her research project about three years ago when he worked for a nonprofit organization she was directing, called Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society.

“When I met Marcia and started working with her on a different project and she discovered that my family is from Cape Breton, she got very excited and we started working on this project together,” Rosenblum said. “I have family members who are from Cape Breton. My dad is from Cape Breton, and the entire Rosenblum side of the family is from Glace Bay, N.S.”

Rosenblum said he has been meeting with members of the Jewish community from Cape Breton and collecting oral histories on and off for the past three years.

“I’m collecting oral histories and … talking about their experiences and their family histories, how they arrived in Canada in the first place, why they moved to Nova Scotia, their experiences on Cape Breton Island, both as a Jewish community and how they interacted with other communities, and celebrating some of the multiculturalism on Cape Breton Island that people don’t really know about.”

Last year, Ostashewski and Rosenblum held an event at York University about Jewish life in Cape Breton and in small towns in Canada, and put archival photos on display.

photo - The former Congregation Sons of Israel in Glace Bay in 1932
The former Congregation Sons of Israel in Glace Bay in 1932. (photo from Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University)

“We had a roundtable panel discussion … [about] what immigration patterns look like and what it has meant for these Jewish communities,” he said. “So many of them, especially from Cape Breton, so many people have moved to Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa – bigger cities where their kids have moved. It’s certainly a pattern, but it’s an indicator of the kinds of lives that Jewish parents wanted for their kids.”

He said that, today, there isn’t much of a Jewish community in Cape Breton. According to the Atlantic Jewish Council, Cape Breton’s Jewish community peaked in 1941, when it boasted a population of 939 Jews.

“The few who live there, they have trouble making a minyan … it’s incredibly challenging. Sometimes, people go from city to city so they can have a minyan, but there really aren’t more than 10 Jews on the island still. I believe there is one Jewish child, but that can’t be entirely verified,” he said.

Rosenblum said that, for him, this research project is “deeply personal. It’s a part of my family history, but I also think, for Jewish communities to have a strong sense of what kind of national identity they have, how they fit into the idea of Canada as a multicultural country, as a place where you’re free to be whoever you are, [is important],” he said. “I think the stronger the sense of where our parents came from and the kinds of experiences they had in these small towns, the better we can mobilize communities in these larger cities.”

Rosenblum said he hopes to find more Jewish Cape Breton natives who are willing to share their stories, photos and video or audio recordings, so that they can be archived.

“The most important part for me, the most exciting part, is seeing these amazing collections that families have, these incredible photos and memories that I’m hoping they can preserve.”

Diversity Cape Breton, a web portal launched this month, is available to anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Jewish community and other communities in Cape Breton. Visit diversitycapebreton.ca.

For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

Format ImagePosted on June 26, 2015June 25, 2015Author Sheri Shefa CJNCategories NationalTags Cape Breton, Ely Rosenblum, Marcia Ostashewski
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