Steven Greenman w/Cleveland Chinese Music Ensemble, Cleveland, OH, 21 Mar 2012
">Steven Greenman in collaboration with the Cleveland Chinese Music Ensemble
Ethnomusicologist David Badagnani has created a fantastic ensemble dedicated to performing traditional Chinese folk music showing once again the bountiful richness and diversity of Cleveland's cultural and ethnic communities. The ensemble has graciously invited me for the finale to create a fusion of both traditional Chinese and traditional East European Jewish folk music.
The Melodies of Mah Jongg
7 p.m., Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage
2929 Richmond Road
Beachwood, Ohio
$14 for the general public and $12 for Maltz Museum members; order in advance and save $2. Call (216) 593-0595 to order tickets.
Join the Cleveland Chinese Music Ensemble (featuring vocalist Xue "Snow" Yu of Qingdao, Shandong, China) for an intimate evening of graceful and exotic music inspired by the fanciful images seen on mah jongg tiles--the four seasons, flowers, winds, and dragons--played on traditional Chinese instruments.
As an added attraction, interspersed between the pieces will be selected readings (in both Chinese and English) of evocative poems from China's classical antiquity, as well as showings of traditional watercolor flower paintings.
For a memorable finale, the internationally renowned, Cleveland-based klezmer violinist Steven Greenman will join the ensemble for a cross-cultural performance of a Jewish favorite, recreating the kind of musical interaction that could have taken place between Jewish and Chinese musicians in the Lower Manhattan of the early 20th century.
This program is held in conjunction with the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage's showing of the "Project Mah Jongg" exhibition, which documents how this Chinese game of chance became a tradition among Jewish Americans beginning in the 1920s. The traveling exhibition, which was developed in New York City in 2010, opened at the Maltz Museum in January 2012.
Article about the concert from Cleveland Jewish News
Article about the concert from ClevelandClassical.com
More information: www.maltzmuseum.org/events/the-melodies-of-mah-jongg-2