festivals

Klezcadia set to return

Bay Area klezmer trio Veretski Pass returns to Klezcadia, which runs in-person and online June 10-15. (photo from Klezcadia)

Klezcadia, a festival of klezmer music and Yiddish culture, is back for a second year. The June 10-15 event can be experienced in-person in Victoria or virtually from around the world.

The 2025 festival, free for all who register, features author and playwright Michael Wex, who will be offering a two-part webinar titled Jews, Germans and Jive: Yiddish as a Language of Resistance.

Wex, the author of the bestseller Born to Kvetch and Just Say Nu, will be delivering the talks from his home in Toronto. No stranger to Vancouver audiences, his play, The Last Night at the Cabaret Yitesh (Di Letste Nakht Baym Yitesh), in which he also performed, closed the 2024 Chutzpah! Festival.

Laura Rosenberg, the director and driving force behind Klezcadia, said Wex “is arguably the most famous person to interpret the public impact of the Yiddish language on the English language.”

She told the Independent that the festival’s mission, operating principles and format will be the same as they were in its inaugural season. “The performance and workshop content, on the other hand, will be completely new for 2025, though obviously within the same klezmer music and Yiddish culture arena as last year, and involving many of the same artists and faculty members,” she said.

Between in-person and virtual attendees, Klezcadia had more than 500 participants from 21 countries in 2024 and the 2025 registration looks to be at least on par with those data, according to Rosenberg.

“Everything from concerts to workshops to open rehearsals is designed to equalize as much as possible the experience of in-person and virtual participants,” she said. “And, thanks to our generous donors, registration is once again free.”

Other notable appearances this year include returning Bay Area klezmer trio Veretski Pass, who will appear on both the concert and workshop rosters. Members Cookie Segelstein (violin), Joshua Horowitz (19th-century button accordion) and Stuart Brotman (bass) play a wide variety of East European numbers. This year, they will offer “band-to-band master classes” with two Victoria-based klezmer ensembles.

Vancouver singer/songwriter Geoff Berner, joined by Segelstein, will perform songs from his upcoming album – Berner’s first to be completely in Yiddish. Over the past 25 years, Berner has toured in 17 countries, opened for rock stars in stadiums and, the Klezcadia notes state, “played nearly every dirty little café bar in Western Europe.”

Klezcadia 2025 will see the Victoria debut of Jordan Wax, a rising star on the Yiddish singer/songwriter scene, who will share music from his newly released album, The Heart Deciphers, on the Borscht Beat label. The New Mexico musician blends many influences, from the Missouri Ozarks to the Indo-Hispanic world and the entire Ashkenazic diaspora.

Christina Crowder, director of the Klezmer Institute, based in Yonkers, NY, will be on hand to perform century-old music rediscovered in Ukraine’s Vernadsky Library, which recently was published for global use via the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project.

As it did in 2024, this year’s festival will conclude with the entire Klezcadia cohort performing a finale concert at the Stage in the Park (Cameron Bandshell) in Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park.

Billing itself as “A Safer Shtetl,” Klezcadia’s hybrid environment prioritizes the safe experience of immunocompromised and high-risk participants, for the performers, crew and volunteers, and for attendees. Indoor activities feature the use of protective protocols such as supplemental air purification, required masking and daily onsite COVID testing.

“We learned from our inaugural-season experience that our fully hybrid format was extremely valuable, both to our immunocompromised and high-risk participants, but also to a vast number of people who, for geographic or financial reasons, were unable to attend in person,” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg gives credit to other members of the Klezcadia team for helping with the various technical tools needed to put together a hybrid festival. She said some of the evolving challenges faced in viral safety and communal safety, and the current cross-border political situation, have provided added appreciation to how much a hybrid design can be adapted at short notice, if needed.

People who were not able to attend a live event in 2024 have expressed their thanks to Rosenberg in the lead-up to this year’s festival.

“One of my greatest delights in the intervening year since our inaugural season has been hearing what a difference Klezcadia made to our immunocompromised and high-risk attendees,” she said. “Whether local or halfway across the world, many of these people have felt shut out of their communities, including their Jewish cultural communities, and they expressed in heartfelt terms how life-changing it was for them to be able to participate in a cultural festival that prioritized their safety but was open to everyone.”

All Klezcadia events will take place within a 10-minute drive from downtown Victoria. Specific venue information will be provided only after registration, and only to in-person participants. For more information, visit klezcadia.org.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Enjoy Bach with a twist

Alon Sariel is Early Music Vancouver’s artist in residence for this summer’s festival. (photo by Suzette Vorster-Van Acker)

‘We are thrilled to offer audiences an adventurous program of some of Bach’s seminal works, but with a twist,” said Early Music Vancouver artistic and executive director Suzie LeBlanc in a press release announcing this summer’s early music festival. “From traditional compositions reworked for unique instruments, such as mandolin and oud, to the introduction of vocal improvisation, inspired by Bach’s own customary practice of instrumental extemporization, Bach Untamed welcomes listeners to seek out new perspectives of Bach’s well-known and beloved classics.”

This year’s festival – which runs July 30-Aug. 8 at various venues – features almost 50 emerging and established early music artists from around the world, including mandolinist and multi-instrumentalist Alon Sariel, who is EMV’s 2024 Summer Festival Artist in Residence.

In addition to headlining two concerts – Alon Sariel: Plucked Bach at Congregation Beth Israel on July 31, in which he will premiere his own Bach-inspired Mandolin Partita, and EMV’s festival finale at the Vancouver Playhouse, which features the Canadian premiere of Amit Weiner’s 2019 reconstruction of Bach’s Italian Concerto – Sariel will perform in several other festival concerts, as well as teach a workshop on Bach for plucked instruments.

Sariel, who was born and raised in Beersheba, Israel, met LeBlanc at the Utrecht Early Music Festival, in the Netherlands, last fall.

“I was playing there with friends from Profeti della Quinta, an Israeli vocal ensemble based in Switzerland, who was already a guest of EMV in the past,” Sariel told the Independent. “Suzie and I had a chat and it turned out I had some very different programs to offer and that a residency could be a lovely idea to feature a few of those.”

Sariel’s first visit to Vancouver was more than 30 years ago, as a kid, with his family. He’s excited to return. He arrived July 24 and will be staying until Aug. 9 – “the final concert, Bach & the Mandolin, with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, is on Aug. 8,” he said.

“The program looks really splendid (a huge shout out to Suzie!) and I’m very glad and proud to wear the artist-in-residence hat this summer – can’t wait really!” said Sariel.

LeBlanc started the artist-in-residence program in 2021 “to create more exchanges between EMV’s guests and the local community.”

“EMV has under its wing a local baroque orchestra – the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, led by Alexander Weimann – and a Baroque Mentorship Orchestra Program (BOMP) at UBC for students and community players,” she explained. “In addition to his own concerts in the summer festival, Alon will collaborate with these ensembles, working with professionals, students and community players, going beyond concert performances and delivering a collaborative and educational experience.

“He will also lead a three-day course called ‘Unconventional Bach,’ which focuses on playing and arranging Bach’s works for different instruments,” she said, noting, “Alon is also a composer and his guiding principle is ‘giving new life to existing material, as well as creating completely new works.’ We’re excited to have an artist in residence who shares this philosophy with EMV and will be so present beyond the concert stage.”

LeBlanc described Sariel’s Bach solos on mandolin as “captivating and very personal.”

“He fully deserves his notoriety as one of the most versatile and gifted mandolin players, lutenists and ensemble directors of today,” she said.

A soloist, chamber player and artistic director, Sariel has performed more than 1,000 concerts in more than 35 countries, according to his bio. In his Plucked Bach recordings (Pentatone), he interprets Bach’s solo music and creates new arrangements for mandolin and lute, the baroque guitar and the oud. His album Telemandolin (Berlin Classics) was awarded an OPUS KLASSIK, making Sariel the first mandolinist to earn the honour. But the path to professional success hasn’t been easy and, said Sariel, “there are still many obstacles in the way of a mandolin player.”

“For any violinist, pianist, conductor, etc., there are many competitions which could serve as a jump step to a musical career – the mandolin has none,” he explained. “I attended several competitions which were open to all instruments and won them all and, even then, I kept getting lines like, ‘Thank you very much for getting in touch, we’ll contact you shall we be interested in the future.’ Booking agencies, record labels and concert halls can still be very suspicious when it comes to the mandolin, that’s why I feel a great responsibility in every concert that I play. It’s not only about me getting re-invited, but it’s about convincing this or that director and, of course, the audience, to give a chance to something new. The theatres could always go for another Rachmaninoff piano concerto or another Beethoven symphony, they don’t have to ‘take a risk’ with a mandolin player, that’s why I really have to stand out in my artistic profile in order to get the chance.”

LeBlanc first heard about Sariel from Renaud Loranger, the artistic director of the Festival de Lanaudière in Québec. When she met Sariel at the Utrecht Early Music Festival, she said, “Our meeting was very pleasant – his playing was fabulous – and I immediately saw that he would be a great and versatile artist in residence. Also, I knew that Vancouverites love the mandolin player Avi Avital, who has played many times in Vancouver. What perhaps they don’t know is that Alon has collaborated with Avi on a recording of Vivaldi’s concerto for two mandolins (Deutsche Grammophon, 2020). I hope all mandolin lovers will come out to hear Alon – he has brought to light many works for the mandolin from centuries past and commissioned composers to write new pieces for him.”

And to think that Sariel wanted to play the electric guitar when he was a kid.

“I wished to learn e-guitar, but I was much too young for that,” he recalled. “The director of the conservatory gave me a little basic test – I had to clap some rhythms and sing some tones, etc. She suggested I should take the violin, but I wasn’t excited. Then she said there’s also the mandolin – which I didn’t know at all – and that it’s in fact ‘very similar’ to the guitar, you hold it pretty much the same way, but the size would be perfect for an 8-year-old. She mentioned the mandolin orchestra and the fact it gets to represent the city occasionally, even abroad, so I agreed to give it a try and thought I’d shift to e-guitar later on. Very soon I forgot about the guitar and was all invested in the mandolin, I absolutely loved it!”

LeBlanc chooses EMV’s artists in residence “first and foremost for their great artistry, for their extensive knowledge of historical performance practice, and their ability to share their ideas and knowledge generously,” she said. Previous artists in residence have been Cree-Métis baritone Jonathon Adams (2021); Scottish Baroque specialists David Greenberg and David McGuiness, violin and keyboard (2022); and Catalina Vicens, keyboard and curator of the Tagliavini Collection of ancient musical instruments in Bologna, Italy (2023).

“It has been extremely rewarding to watch the program grow over the past few years, and hear the enthusiastic audience feedback to our different artists in residence,” she said.

For more information about and tickets to this summer’s festival, visit earlymusic.bc.ca.

More CREATE! to enjoy

Eastside Arts Society presents CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival July 22-28. (photo by Wendy D)

Eastside Arts Society (EAS) presents the fourth edition of its newly expanded, immersive summer arts event, CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival, at various Eastside Arts District (EAD) venues from July 22-28, in addition to its traditional all-day outdoor festivities at Strathcona Park July 27.

“We are thrilled to see the evolution of the CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival into a true, district-wide event that illuminates all that the EAD has to offer,” said Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of EAS, who is a member of the Jewish community.

The festival will offer affordable ticketed art workshops and performances at pop-up locations. Community highlights include CREATE! pop-up art workshops at Off the Rail Brewing, Luppolo Brewing and Strange Fellows Brewing from July 22-26 and studio art workshops at 1000 Parker Street Studios, the Mergatroid Building and the Arts Factory on July 28; Canadian musical artist Paul Pigat at the Firehall Arts Centre on July 25; singer-songwriter Art Bergmann at the Rickshaw Theatre on July 26; a roving piano and dance performance from Mascall Dance on July 26; live mural painting by Eastside Culture Crawl co-founder Richard Tetrault at East 4th Avenue and Ontario Street from July 22-26; and more.

On July 27, the festival returns for a full day of festivities at Strathcona Park, with a series of outdoor art-making workshops taught by EAD artists, including weaving, summer florals, introduction to flamenco (all abilities), crochet, charcoal drawing, and a BIPOC expressive art workshop.

For the first time this year, CREATE! will partner with 604 Records and Light Organ Records to present a live music concert stage at Strathcona Park (July 27, 2-6 p.m.), featuring homegrown artists Haleluya Hailu, Fur Trade (Steven Bays and Parker Bosley from Hot Hot Heat) and Sarah Jane Scouten.

A free all-ages CREATE! Festival Concert pass will also include access to the festival’s Art Zone, featuring public art activities, beer garden, food trucks and Art Shop, sponsored by the Strathcona BIA. CREATE! Art Zone public art activities will include zine making; planting flowers and painting your own pot to keep; and cyanotype, a photographic printing process activated by the sun.

A curated selection of local handmade artworks and goods will be available at the Festival Art Shop, and visitors can enjoy a fully licensed beer garden, serving beer, cider and wine from Strange Fellows Brewing, as well as an assortment of food from food trucks including Camion Café, Midnight Joe’s and Varinicey Pakoras.

Also on July 27, participants in Eastside Arts Society’s 9th annual Art! Bike! Beer! Crawl Brewery Tour Fundraiser will end their day of cycling/walking and imbibing at the CREATE! Art Zone. All fundraiser proceeds will benefit the Eastside Arts Society’s yearly activities and community events.

Art workshops are $35 for youth/adults and $20 for flamenco and children’s workshops. Children under the age of 12 must be supervised by an adult. The general public can access festival activities with a free CREATE! Festival Concert pass, sponsored by the Strathcona BIA. For full festival details and ticket info, visit createartsfestival.ca.

– Courtesy Eastside Arts Society

Chance to create

Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the Eastside Arts Society. (photo by Wendy D)

Eastside Arts Society (EAS) presents the return of its two-day summer art-making event, CREATE! Arts Festival, taking place at Strathcona Park on July 22 and at various Eastside Arts District studios on July 23.

A community initiative designed to welcome guests to explore, learn and create art together with local artists, CREATE! features a variety of accessible visual and performing arts workshops for adults and youth, including watercolour painting, needle felting, indigo dying, pottery, glass fusing, photography, ukulele, Salish singing and storytelling.

“In addition to a variety of art workshops, demonstrations and public participation art installations, we are also incredibly proud to introduce our brand new festival art shop, featuring a curated selection of arts and crafts all handmade by local artists,” said EAS artistic and executive director Esther Rausenberg, who is a member of the Jewish community.

On July 22, there will be a series of outdoor art-making workshops taught by more than 15 artists who live and/or work in the Eastside Arts District, many of whom will be participating in CREATE! Arts Festival for the first time. Adult and youth workshops will be hosted by Taaye Wong, Tanna Po, Suzan Marczak, Nima Nasiri, Naomi Yamamoto, Niki Holmes, Ross den Otter, Daphne Roubini, Russell Wallace, Jewish community member Naomi Steinberg, Nicole Caspillo, Nathaniel Marchand, Eri Ishii and Chantal Cardinal (FELT à la main with LOVE). A children and youth workshop will be hosted by Amberlie Perkin and an all-abilities workshop by Alternative Creations Studio.

Saturday festivities will also include a general admission CREATE! Art Zone. Art demonstrations include painting, pottery and glass beading from Francis Tiffany, Julia Chirka (summer skool) and members of Terminal City Glass Co-op. Public participation art projects include a life-size colouring mural with Serena Chu of Chu Chu, squeegee art with Joanne Probyn, and the building and performing of two giant crow puppets – in honour of EAS’s unofficial mascot – with Jacquie Rolston. Opus Art Supplies will have a hands-on block carving and printing activation: carve and pull a mini-block print, and contribute to a collaborative printmaking collage.

A selection of local handmade artworks and goods, curated by OH Studio Project, will be available at the festival shop. There will be a fully licensed beer garden, serving beer, cider and wine from Strange Fellows Brewing, as well as an assortment of food from a collection of food trucks, including Earnest Ice Cream, Wak Wak Burger, Mahshiko and Camion Café.

On July 22, the 8th Annual Art! Bike! Beer! Crawl Brewery Tour & Fundraiser will, for the first time, end at the festival grounds.

Activities will move indoors on July 23, connecting participants with art production spaces in neighbouring Eastside studios, with additional art workshops hosted by members of the Terminal City Glass Co-op, Richard Tetrault, Sonya Iwasiuk, Grace Lee (eikcam ceramics) and Naomi Yamamoto.

Workshops are $35 (plus GST) for youth/adults, with the exception of Perkin’s workshop for children/youth at $20 (plus GST); children under the age of 12 must be supervised by an adult. The general public can access festival activities at Strathcona Park for a $5 general admission fee (children under age 12 are free). For full festival details and workshop registration, visit createartsfestival.ca.

– Courtesy Eastside Arts Society