<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an<\/strong> <\/span>official old guy. An arts agency made a documentary about roots music in Ohio, and a bunch of baby-boomers, including me, was the subject. We were the old fogies on the porch, picking away at authentic instruments.\u00a0The guys in my<\/em> \u201cold guy\u201d pantheon are all dead: Muddy Waters, Dave Tarras, Mickey Katz.<\/p>\n I saw a 92-year-old piano player. He isn\u2019t dead.<\/p>\n I still get nervous when I play. I\u2019m not dead.<\/p>\n I once played an \u201cold guy\u201d record-release party at Nighttown, a local club. Something like my 1,028th Yiddishe Cup gig. I played a Moldovan folk piece in 7\/16 and stopped halfway through. Man, I must have been playing it in 9\/16 or 10\/16. I was so ahead of the game. I was freaked out by my fellow musicians in the room.<\/p>\n Me and<\/strong> <\/span>nervous go way back. My first recitals at Victory Park School\u00a0in South Euclid, Ohio, were debacles. I had memorized my tunes and then forgot them. Let\u2019s take it from the top again, shall we, Bert?<\/em> Worse, a violin prodigy always followed me. Philip Setzer. He wound up in the Emerson String Quartet.<\/p>\n I just bought a ticket to see Setzer next month at the Cleveland Institute of Music. I also wrote him a fan letter, including the tag “you want to meet for coffee?” I\u2019d say there\u2019s a 50-50 chance that\u2019ll happen.<\/p>\n I really botched “Theme of Exodus” one year at Victory Park. Phil probably followed that with some slick Mozart concerto. Both Setzer’s parents were violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. I have no idea why they lived in South Euclid. They were total Heights profile, right? If I meet up with Phil, I’ll ask him, \u201cWhy did your parents live in South Euclid?\u201d<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert tomorrow (7 p.m. Thurs. Aug. 18) at Walter Stinson Community Park, 2301 Fenwick Road, University Heights, Ohio. Bring a chair or blanket.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m an official old guy. An arts agency made a documentary about roots music in Ohio, and a bunch of baby-boomers, including me, was the subject. We were the old fogies on the porch, picking away at authentic instruments.\u00a0The guys in my \u201cold guy\u201d pantheon are all dead: Muddy Waters, Dave Tarras, Mickey Katz. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29975"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29996,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions\/29996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}