🕵️old klezmers🎻Klezcadia festival is over for another year. A very small idiosyncratic festival but with very high quality artists and which tries hard to include people who cannot attend 'normal' klezmer festivals because they are immunocompromised or can't travel or pay, etc. 🫡🎶
I said it before but spending the week with Josh Horowitz and Cookie Segelstein was the highlight (Bay Area klezmers who IMO know as much as any other players on earth). And at the same time very humble and giving towards students in a way that doesn't put them on the spot if they're struggling.
Cookie told me a wonderful tidbit when I was explaining my YIVO research last year to one of the young staff (an American Yiddishist who had been brought in to run tech for the festival). if you'll recall I was researching New York landsmanshaftn and which klezmorim were being hired by them.
Cookie said, actually branches of her family were in the Veretskier landsmanshaft in NY and they hired Naftule Brandwein (celebrity clarinetist not at all from Nyzhni Vorota/Veretsky, he was from Przemyślany) & that he would diligently learn and play their local repertoire for them at their events.
👀
...and that he was eventually not hired back because he was a diva and not because of the quality of his playing. And that some older relatives were bemused that klezmer revival era people worshipped him so much. "Him? he was just a guy" type thing
Anyhow, Brandwein or other klez celebs like Dave Tarras or Sam Beckerman also showed up in ads or meeting minutes being hired for diverse landsmanshaftn in New York back in that era (20s-50s) when they weren't hiring their local guy. love hearing secondhand how it felt on the customer side of it🤪