Newsletter n° 3

Dear friends!

First, please have a look at this video, nice memory from Beygale Orkestra's Concert in Weimar, last month: https://youtu.be/SwhhEhBTElk

To bid farewell to the summer and welcome the autumn, I wish to write a few words and share with you three major upcoming events in September and October:

1. Clown course.

2. Klezmer in the Czech Republic: "Yiddish Indian Summer in Mikulov" with Bob Cohen.

3. A trip in a gipsy caravan.

1. Clown:

I am soon going to retire to the mountains (near the Alps) for ten days to take a course called "rhythm and expression" taught by the Canadian clown master Michel Dallaire.

I have often been told that I am "a bit of a clown" (on stage but also in real life). So I'm hoping that after this intensive class, I will be even more of a clown. I don't have any firm plans for a new career, but I have a feeling this experience is going to enhance my professional life as well as my personal life. I'll keep you posted for the premiere of my clown and fiddle one-man-show… ;-)

2. Mikulov with Bob Cohen :

Late September I will be going to Mikulov*, in the Czech Republic.

For five years this beautiful small town in Moravia (South of the Czech Republic) has hosted a mini klezmer festival and weekend-long klezmer workshop called "Yiddish Indian Summer in Mikulov". It was launched by a Prague-based klezmer band, "Letajici Rabin".

http://www.letajicirabin.cz/foto

*In Mikulov, (Nikolsburg in Yiddish), there used to be quite a large Jewish community which thrived in the 18th century under the spiritual guidance of Reb Shmelki, a Hassidic master. The synagogue and the beautiful, very old Jewish cemetery are definitely worth a visit.

I have already been several times in Mikulov to teach klezmer with my friends from the Beygale Orkestra. This time I will be the only tutor from France, but I will be working with Bob Cohen. It is a great pleasure to teach and play with Bob, a fiddle player and ethnomusicologist I admire deeply. In the 1990s, he founded the band "Di Naye Kapelye", which is one of my favourite modern klezmer bands.

http://www.dinayekapelye.com/dnknews.htm

This year at Mikulov the theme will be "Klezmer from the Carpathians".

The workshop is open to all musicians with an advanced level. Come if you can, the town is very nice and the workshop, I'm sure, will be unforgettable!

3. Gipsy caravans:

I am still nostalgic of the years when I travelled in a horse-drawn gipsy caravan... Fortunately, a group of friends travelling in gipsy caravans will be passing near me in the Loire Valley. They are the "Hipponettes", going from one village to the next with twelve horses, three caravans and a beautiful old-style merry-go-round (carousel) they have built with wood and operate to the sound of live music.

I will join them in October, on the roads of Brittany, with my fiddle and mandolin!

Latcho drom! Shana Tova (happy new year)!

Have a great autumn!

Fiddly yours,

Amit