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Greetings!
We're pleased to present you with
CTMD's
Global Beat
of the Boroughs eNewsletter featuring
news
from
New York's traditional music scene, artist
profiles and
information on CTMD-related events. Each month
we'll provide
information on
events around town and highlight the people
working
to preserve the rich cultural heritage of New
York's
immigrant communities.
CTMD's 40th Anniversary Celebration!
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Sharing Traditions for 40 Years
This year CTMD is proud to celebrate our 40th
Anniversary! Over the years we've had the
privilege of
working with thousands of artists in dozens
of New
York's ethnic communities, helping
traditional arts to
be passed on to new generations and shared with
wide public audiences.
To celebrate this historic occasion, CTMD
will hold a
major 40th Anniversary Celebration on
Thursday, June 5 at the Hiro Ballroom (at the
Maritime Hotel, 371 West 16th St at 9th
Ave.). We
hope you'll be able to join us - more details
will be
coming soon!
As part of the Celebration, we're pleased to
honor Susan
Hinko, a long-time CTMD board member,
and Joanie Madden of the
groundbreaking Irish supergroup Cherish The
Ladies.
Back in the mid-1980s, CTMD's Ethel Raim
and
Martin Koenig worked with Mick
Moloney to bring together Madden (tin
whistle
and flute), her friend
Eileen Ivers (fiddle), and a number of
other
young
virtuosos together for a series of concerts
to highlight
the growing contribution of women in Irish
music.
It was Madden who had the idea to call the
project "Cherish the Ladies," after a well
known jig,
and well, they sure took off. Now
international stars,
CTL is cherished by audiences around the
world, yet
they remain committed to teaching Irish music to
students young and not-so-young.
CTMD
Project Director Eileen Condon, Ph.D.
caught
up with Madden and files this profile (click
on the
below
link):
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CTMD Calendar
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We hope to see you at some of these exciting presentations:
Thursday, April 17: Tantshoyz
(Dance Party/Workshop) in collaboration with
the JCC
in Manhattan and Workmen's Circle. Led by master
dancer and klezmer revival pioneer Zev
Feldman to the accompaniment of live klezmer
music.
Dancers of all skill levels welcome. At the
JCC in
Manhattan's theater, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at
76th St. Admission $10, $8 for JCC and Workmen's
Circle members.
(7:00-10:00PM)
Saturday, April 19: Pachamama Peruvian
Arts
will collaborate with the Association of
Peruvians at
Cornell (APC) to perform at their Fiesta '08.
The
program opens Cornell's newest exhibition
celebrating the recent donation of over 500 pre-
Colombian Peruvian ceramics and art. The
event will
feature Pachamama artists with their performance
groups: Alcatraz: Afro-Peruvian Jazz, Peru
Inca Folk-
dances of the Andes, and Raices-Andean music.
This
program for Cornell students is produced by
Alisa
Orahovac, a freshman at Cornell and a
Pachamama Peruvian Arts alumnae! At
the Herbert F.
Johnson
Museum of Art in Ithaca, NY.
Saturday, May 3: CTMD's Ukrainian Wave
Communtiy Cultural
Initiative presents Ukrainian Women's
Voices
featuring Mariana Sadowska and friends. At the
Milbank Chapel at Columbia University Teachers
College (West 120th Street at Broadway,
Manhattan).
(Time TBA)
Monday, May 5: CTMD Touring Artists
Kotchegna Dance Company
live in concert of West African music and
dance at
the Queens
Library in Flushing. Admission free. (6:00PM)
Friday, May 9: CTMD Ukrainian Wave
Community Cultural
Initiative presents Mapping Ukraine in
Song,
a concert
connected to a new cartography exhibition.
At the
Ukrainian Museum, 222 East 6th Street
(between 2nd
and 3rd Ave.). (7:00PM)
Thursday, May 29: Tantshoyz
(Dance Party/Workshop) in collaboration with
the JCC
in Manhattan and Workmen's Circle. Led by a
master
dance leader to the accompaniment of live klezmer
music.
Dancers of all skill levels welcome. At the
JCC in
Manhattan's theater, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at
76th St. Admission $10, $8 for JCC and Workmen's
Circle members.
(7:00-10:00PM)
Thursday June 5: CTMD 40th Anniversary
Celebration at the Hiro Ballroom
(Maritime Hotel,
371 W 16th St. by 9th Ave.). More details
coming soon!
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Reissue of Dave Tarras Klezmer Clarinet CD
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Historic 1978 Recording Now On CD
CTMD is pleased to announce the reissue of our
historic
1978 recording, Dave Tarras: Music for the
Traditional
Jewish Wedding. In this landmark
recording
legendary
klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras (1897-1989)
returns to
the repertoire he had learned as a young man in
Europe. Joined by his colleagues of many years -
Sam Beckerman on accordion and Irving
Graetz on
drums - Tarras performs the kind of music
that was
played at Jewish weddings from his native
region in
the old Ukrainian province of Podolia.
The selections include melodies for specific
parts of
the wedding ceremony, which are rich in the
older
Jewish music coloration, as well as dance
melodies
that were favored by the Ukrainian and
Bessarabian
Jews. The recording is structured according
to the
sequence of a traditional wedding and will
offer the
listener a deeply emotional memory of life as
it was
lived then, transmitted by one of the most
creative men
who lived it.
Available for the first time on CD, Music for
the
Traditional Jewish Wedding would be Tarras's
last
studio recording. The 1978 session was
produced by
his young prot�g�s Andy Statman and
Walter Zev
Feldman, who were then working with the
Balkan Arts
Center (now CTMD) to present Tarras in a
historic
series of concerts-the first efforts by any
institution in
North America to systematically document,
preserve
and present klezmer music.
Now, looking back thirty years later, it is
clear that the
Tarras concerts and recording proved to be a
vital
stimulus in what has become a world-wide
revitalization of klezmer music.
A new 24-page booklet includes detailed track
annotations and a new essay on Tarras by
Walter Zev
Feldman. Generous support for the reissue of
Dave
Tarras: Music for the Traditional Jewish
Wedding was
provided by the Keller-Shatanoff
Foundation.
To order, click on the below link:
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Report from the Vechornytsi
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CTMD's Ukrainian Wave Community Cultural
Initiative packed the dance floor of the
Ukrainian East Village Restaurant at the last
Vechornytsi village dance party
program on
Saturday, March 1. Dance instructor Tamara
Chernyakhovska's dribka
(shivering) polka
was a big hit among the variety of dances the
crowd
came to learn and enjoy.
The East Village's
beloved
dance teacher Pani Daria Genza turned up
with friends and two of her students to join
in the fun.
During breaks, harmony singing broke out led by
Ukrainian singers from Brooklyn, with an
unaccompanied duet by the fabulous Pavlishyn
sisters (Nadia and Nataliya). Band leader
Andriy Milavsky and members of Cheres
played nonstop for hours and jammed
Carpathian-style with two stellar klezmer
musicians
and Tantshoyz regulars from Connecticut--
flautist Adrianne Greenbaum and violinist
Rayhan Pasternak. Duzhe diakuyu!
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New Youth Chinese Opera Program
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After School Program at I.S. 89
CTMD is pleased to initiate a new partnership
with
Manhattan Youth and Chinatown's Mencius
Society to
create an innovative new Beijing/Peking Opera
program for middle school students at
I.S. 89 in
Lower Manhattan. The program, supported in
part by
the New York City Department of Youth and
Community Development, will enable master
instructors from the Mencius Society to work
with
students on a full-scale production of
Beijing/Peking
Opera featuring song, acting, dance,
acrobatics, and
performances on Chinese musical instruments.
This
exciting program will begin on Friday, March
14 with a
demonstration for the students by CTMD
Touring Artists EastRiver Ensemble.
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Remembering Marty Levitt and Rudy Tepel
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Klezmer Mourns Two Leading Clarinetists and Band Leaders
Over the past three months, the New York
klezmer
scene lost two of its leading
clarinetists/band
leaders. Marty Levitt and Rudy Tepel
were both prominent during the 1950's and
1960's, a period when klezmer
music declined in popularity amongst the
general
American Jewish community, though demand grew
within Hasidic circles. To get a better
perspective on
the contributions of these two men, we spoke with
Professor Joel
Rubin of the University of Virginia, an
ethnomusicologist and leading klezmer
clarinetist. Click on the below link to read
the interview:
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March 13 Cape Breton Dance Program
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NYC Barn Dance at Hungarian House
On March 13, NYC Barn Dance will
feature two traditional sets danced by Cape
Bretoners
and their descendants in Boston, as well as
several
New England contradances and square dances.
Featured performers are fiddler Wendy
McIsaacs
of Nova Scotia and Boston-based step dancer
Christine Morrison.
Dances are regular events in Cape Breton
villages
and towns, and dance repertoire is often
unique to
each locale. The event will teach a set dance
from
the village
of Mabou on the coast of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. The
Mabou Set is a three-part
circle dance, the first two parts danced to
jigs, and the
third to reels. It is danced in two circles
with the two
circles interacting during the third part.
In Mabou it is danced without
calls
because the villagers all know the dance (but
not to
worry, the dance will be called at the Barn
Dance).
Many Cape Bretoners moved to Boston over the
last
century because work was hard to find at home
and
plentiful in the American city down the
coast. The
Boston Set danced by this expatriate
community more
closely resembles a typical New England square
dance.
The evening starts at 6:30PM with an old-time
jam
session; dancing goes from 8:00PM - 11:00PM. At
Hungarian House, 213 E. 82nd St. (btwn. 2nd and
3rd). Admission is $15 (general) / $13
(students &
seniors). Ages 18+ are welcome. For more
information go to the NYC Barn
Dance website.
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Questions about Quechua
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Facts About the Andean Language by Professor Miryam Yataco
Last June, CTMD had the pleasure of
presenting the
wonderful locally-based
Quechua choir Abya Yalaat the
Pachamama Peruvian Arts Peru Cultura
Viva event.
We wanted to learn more about Quechua, an
inidigeneous Andean language spoken by
about 13 million people across Bolivia,
Argentina,
Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. Professor Miryam
Yataco of University
College
of London has graciously provided to
Pachamama
a
concise fact sheet about Quechua, which you
can read
by clicking on the below link:
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Other Happenings...
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On Friday, March 14th, 7.30-10.30pm, our
friends at
the Brooklyn Arts Council present
Arab-o-rama:
New York Bellydance Music and Dance Review
as
part of their fabulous Brooklyn Maqam Arab Music Festival. This
evening features Brooklyn's legendary
Eddie "The
Sheik" Kochak with his band; a reunion of
1980's
Ibis Nightclub/ Cedars of Lebanon musicians; and
Scott Wilson & Efendi. Accompanying
dancers
include Samara, Layla and Rayhanna At
Lafayette Grill and Bar, 54 Franklin Street
(Manhattan).
That same evening at 8PM, Balkan
Cafe
presents
a night of dance to Greek fiddling featuring
Christos Tiktapanides (Pontic lyra) and
Jerry Kisslinger (daouli)
as well as Beth Bahia Cohen (violin) and
Demetrios Tashie (laouto). At Hungarian
House: 213 E. 82nd St, between 2nd and 3rd Aves,
Manhattan, Doors open at 8 pm, $15 door
Maimouna Keita African Dance presents
Sila Djiguiba:
Path of Hope, a conference, workshop and
concert
series exploring traditional African dance &
drum,
history & culture of Senegal, Guinea, Mali,
Ivory Coast,
and the USA. The conference/workshops will
be held
on Wednesday March 19 - Sun March 23 at Baruch
College, 17 Lexington Ave./23rd St., 6th Fl.
The concert
portion of the program takes place on
Saturday, March
22 @ 8:00 pm, Gerald W. Lynch Theatre @ John Jay
College, 899 10th Ave. (58th & 59th St.) $25
Advance/
$30 Day of for more information visit the Maimouna Keita
website or call 718.399.7867.
On March 29 at 2PM Queens
Library, Broadway
branch (40-20 Broadway, Long Island City)
presents
Music Of Celtic Spain with
Grupo
De Gaita Terra Nosa. Gaita, or
Spanish
bagpipes, are as much a part of the culture
of Galicia
in Northwest Spain as they are to Scotland,
Ireland,
Brittany or Wales. Celebrate Galicia's rich
Celtic
culture with the haunting sounds of the Spanish
bagpipe.
World Music Institute continues his
series presenting past winners of the NEA's
National
Heritage Fellowship Awards with Africa in
America a showcase of traditions from the
African
diaspora. Featured are Ghanaian drummer/composer
Obo Addy, known for his hot polyrhythmic
drumming, and Okropong, his
powerhouse group of musicians and dancers;
conguero Francisco Aguabella, an
elder statesman of
Afro-Cuban percussion who has been active in the
jazz scene since the '50s; Haitian master
drummer
Frisner Augustin and La Troupe
Makandal; and Joao
Grande, arguably the world's foremost
exponent
of the
breathtaking capoeira angola martial arts
dance.
Saturday, March 29, 2008, 8:00PM at Town Hall
(123
West 43rd St New York). Tickets $32, WMI Friends
$27, Students $15.
The
Ukrainian Museum, New York Bandura
Ensemble, and Katja Kolcio present Bandura
Downtown: The Living Museum (alt. The Energy
That
Remains) Enerhija jaka ne propadaje
An evening of new dance, poetry, and music,
featuring
choreography by Katja Kolcio, poetry by
Bowery Poetry
Club'sBob Holman and music by
CTMD Ukrainian Wave Artistic Director
Julian Kytasty with dancers and musicians
from
Wesleyan University. On Saturday April 5 at
7pm at the
Ukrainian Museum, 222 E. 6th St. (between 2nd
Ave.
and Bowery). Admission includes Museum
galleries
and post-concert reception. For info about
tickets and
reservations: 212-228-0110.
The Columbia University Ukrainian Studies
Program
and the Kennan Institute present: Svitlo i
Spovid:
Light and Confession. Singer Taras
Chubai will
perform songs he composed to contemporary
Ukrainian poetry on April 8, 2008 at 7PM.
Concert will
be held in James Memorial Chapel at Union
Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway, at 121st
Street
On April 16, 2008 CUNY will feature the Ozan
Aksoy Trio with the CUNY Middle
Eastern and
Mediterranean Music Ensemble as part of
the City
of the World Concert Series. The Ozan Aksoy
Trio was
founded in 2005, and draws
from Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish, Greek, Jewish,
Arabic, and Alevi musical heritages. The
evening's
repertoire will feature folk tunes from these
regions,
performed on traditional instruments from
Anatolia.
This performance also marks the debut of the
CUNY
Middle Eastern Music Ensemble, which is
based
at Hunter College of CUNY. Musicians include
Aksoy
(vocals, baglama, oud, ney,
kaval
and percussion),
Emrah Kanisicak (vocals, baglama,
cura, guitar) and Atakan Sari
(kemen�e, duduk, bendir,
and
guitar). At Baisley Powell Elebash Recital
Hall, 365
Fifth Ave. (at 34th St.). The free concert
begins at
7:30pm, seating is limited so please arrive
early! For
further information
please contact the CUNY Concert Office at:
[email protected] or 212-817-8607.
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