Showing posts with label jewish culture festival 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jewish culture festival 2013. Show all posts

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Shalom in Szeroka - Krakow Jewish Culture Festival 2013 Finale (06.07)

Shalom in Szeroka street is an annual marathon of music, a feast of love that ends the biggest Jewish Culture Festival in the world. Thousands of people every year come to this open air concert to celebrate, dance, sing together, no matter the age, sex, color of skin, place of birth or religion.

The evening was created for the most part by the same groups that played during the week in the Tempel Synagogue. The festival's scope is to show the Jewish culture as diversified, as modern and as alive as possible. Seven concerts of Jewish music and no klezmer music whatsoever. Instead you get a band like DeLeon from Mexico city, a psychodelic indie group whose music is rooted in the ancient sephardic tradition.


Later in the evening the power trio Boom Pam takes you on the wild surf session as hard rock guitar rides the wave of powerful and heavy bass drum beats and the  and tuba riffs. Boom Pam participates in the guitar rock revival but distinguishes itself from many other bands with the surprising instrumentation and eastern flavour.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Maria Raducanu & Cukunft at Krakow Jewish Festival (03.07)

It would be hard to immagine the modern polish scene without Raphael Roginski and the entire plethora of his projects, idealized to bring back jewish culture, modern and vital, to a country where it used to thrive and where it disappeared completely after the tragedy of World War II. Roginski's vision of jewish music is modern and rebellious and Cukunft is the perfect vehicle to make it a reality - powerfull, tribal drumming, poignant guitar tones and absolutely furious clarinets chasing one another - that's Cukunft, in short.
For the concert at the festival Cukunft (expanded to a quintet with Piotr Domagalski on bass) invited a Ramanian vocalist Maria Raducanu, to sing with them. We are children of the borderline, said Festival's director Janusz Makuch, introducing the performance. And that's where the meetings happen, and where cultures influence each other, and we all can appreciate our differences, and be surprised of how much in common we have. 

Friday, July 5, 2013

Riverloam Trio at Krakow Jewish Festival (02.07)

My appreciation to Mikolaj Trzaska's music is confirmed in many posts in the blog's archive so I'll try keep this one simple. Especially since you can see the concert via festival's web tv yourself.

I remember this trio playing in Alchemia two years ago, they were named Ha Tichona trio back the, which means "inner ear" in hebrew. It is a recurrent term that appears as the name of another band (Inner Ear Quartet with Steve Swell, Tim Daisy and Per-Ake Holmlander) and in many conversations with Mikolaj:

I'm a saxophone player, I'm not a composer, but I'd call myself rather a „music maker”, I make music, I dabble in sewing pieces of music together. I don't compose, meaning I rarely sit down and write. I build the music up, it results from my work, my practice, from my inner hearing. I make music that I can hear is inside me. I try to capture it, I try to translate it and voice it out. I'm trying to do it so that this inner portrait of music I have, It would be presented in the most accurate way there is. I mean so there would be no cunningness, no artificial nicety in it, but the music I play would mirror perfectly my thoughts and my emotions.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

The Apples at Krakow Jewish Festival (28.06)

The Apples' concert opened this year Krakow Jewish Festival with a true funky blast. This definitely was not your typical klezmer music concert, a clear reminder that Jewish music can surprise you in many ways.

The Apples are: Arthur Krasnobaev (trumpet), Yaron Ouzana (trombone), Oleg Nayman (tenor and soprano sax), Yakir Sasson (baritone sax), Yonadav Halevy (drums), Alon Carmelly (bass), Erez Todres (turntable), Ofer "Schoolmaster" Tal (turntable), Uri "Mixmonster" Wertheim (sound console & live effects). Oldschool funk is obviously a foundation of the group's music but it got spiced up with ingredients as diverse as big band swing, eastern folk flavour and modern club music appeal.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Krakow Concert Schedule 01-07.07 (Jewish Culture Festival)

Krakow Jewish Culture Festival keeps you busy the whole next week. Lecturs, meetings, workshops, radio sessions, exhibitions and live music concerts.

before that just one alternative summer invite:

Sebastian Pikula from the Miazsz group is doing musical workshops for children, from Monday till Friday. Sounds like a lot of fun way to start the summer :) Bring your children and yourself, more details in the link.


Krakow Jewish Festival 2013

As the evening musical program goes consult Jewish Festival homepage.  Below you can find a short selection, make sure to check the whole program so you wouldn't miss anything.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Mikolaj Trzaska speaks about jewish music (part of the interview) - Krakow Jewish Culture Festival 2013 starts tonight!


In 90 minutes next edition of Krakow Jewish Festival starts, I'd like to remind on that occasion a part of an interview with Mikolaj Trzaska who, during the festival, will play with the Riverloam Trio (Olie Brice and Mark Sanders) as well as will conduct workshops (and hopefully participate in the midnight jam sessions? :)


obviously you can read the whole interview in the blog's archive.




To, wydaje mi się, wątek Twojej twórczości stosunkowo nowy, ale coraz ważniejszy, zaczęło się od płyty Shofar z Raphaelem Rogińskim - jakie znaczenie ma dla Ciebie obecnie muzyka żydowska?

Historia jest bardzo podobna do tej, którą już opowiedziałem. Są rzeczy, przed którymi nie można się powstrzymać. Np. przed prowadzeniem samochodu należałoby siępowstrzymać od picia alkoholu, albo przy opiekowaniu się dziećmi racze nie powinno siępalić jointów. Ale akurat w sztuce, to jest miejsce, taka przestrzeń, gdzie ty, limitując się,bo oczywiście wszystko jest jakoś limitowane, ale możesz wędrować tam gdzie naprawdę pragniesz, to jest prawdziwa przestrzeń wolności.

Pomijając fakt, że muzyka żydowska ma dla mnie charakter tożsamościowy, pomijając toże to jest dla mnie od strony takiej osobistej, wewnętrznej, psychologicznej bardzoistotne. Myślę sobie, że my potrzebujemy, że ludzie potrzebują mieć coś takiego jakidentyfikacja z czymś dobrym, nie tylko w sobie, ale też w kulturze, w rodzinie. Jaksłuchasz muzyki, tej którą lubisz, to siłą rzeczy się z nią identyfikujesz, chcesz chodzić nakoncerty, chcesz być blisko tego, czujesz się przez to bogatszy, bo to w efekcie, czynicię bogatszym, tak na prawdę, rośniesz z tym. Słuchasz coraz więcej, jesteś corazwrażliwszy, coraz bardziej wymagający z drugiej strony. Ale to jest tak jak z książkami, żeciągle odwiedzasz światy, które dają ci rozwój.

It started with the cd „Shofar” with Rapahel Rogiński and It seems tome it's a relatively fresh aspect of your activity, yet it's becoming evermore important – what does the Jewish music tradition mean to you now?

Well the story is quite similar to the one I've just told you. There are certain things you cannot refrain yourself from. Forinstance one should not drink before driving, or when you babysit you shouldn't smoke joints. But in art, this is a place,a space where, limiting yourself cause everything is somehow limited, but you can go wherever you desire to go, this is truly a space of freedom.

Beside the fact that Jewish music is important to my identity, that it's something important to me on the most intimate,personal, psychological level. I think that people have a need to, we need to identify ourselves with something good, notonly within us but in culture, in family as well.
When you listen to the music you like, you start to identify yourself with it, you want to see the concerts, you want to beclose to it, it makes you feel enriched and in fact it does enrich you, you grow with it. You listen more, you're ever moresensitive to what you hear, you're also more demanding. It's like with the books – you constantly visit new worlds and it makes you grow.