Aaron Novick, Berkeley, CA, 18 Oct 2008
The BREW: Aaron Novik's Samuel Suite & Dirty Dan, Eval Dan
Saturday October 18, 8:00pm
$10 member, $15 general
JCC East Bay
1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley
Aaron Novik's ten-piece band presents an avant chamber-jazz rumination on the life of Novik's grandfather, who immigrated to America from a small village in WWI Poland. Samuel and Aaron passionately debated music-the grandfather particularly loved Bach's cantatas, a curious irony, that being a Jew, his favorite music was about Jesus. This religious oxymoron serves as the impetus for the sad and loving suite, in which Novik employs Jewish scales in the chorale style to create a sort of Jewish equivalent to Bach's Christian ones.
He uses different variations on the harmonic minor scale, the backbone of most klezmer and Jewish songs, with especially intriguing-and practically never used-scales starting on the second, third, sixth and seventh degrees.
To kick off the show, Dan Fries and Dan Cantrell of Dirty Dan, Eval Dan trek down another heretofore unexplored path for klezmer, combining the evocative rhythms and melodies of flamenco with traditional klezmer idioms. This fresh fusion melds beautifully, resulting in a crisp and irresistible sound hovering somewhere between Zaporozhye and Málaga.
Co-presented by the Jewish Music Festival, Berkeley Hillel, Polish Arts and Culture Foundation and the Jazzschool
Tickets available at the door