Category — KlezFiction

Yiddishe Cup is not a klezmer band.  Our recordings — and our stage shows — are dark and light, funny and serious.  Check us out.  We stretch out.  Every tune is different.

Klezmer is a clichéd marketing term, and we aren’t a party to it.

We aren’t even Jewish.  I’m not.  I gave it up for Lent.

Y Cup — formerly Yiddishe Cup, formerly Yiddishe Cup Klezmer Band — fits perfectly into the world music/jazz scene.

I admire musicians who, when you hear their recordings, you immediately know who is playing.  Like “Hey, that’s Arnie!”  You know it’s Arnie by the hogs snorting in the background.

Y Cup has a new signature piece: “Mayor of West 83rd Street.”  You can smell natural gas when the tune starts.  Y Cup is a band with a very, very volatile — and totally unique — sound: intricate arrangements and constant shiftings of the lead.  We bring out different colors, different dynamics, different brews.  At a six-hour wedding, an open bar is imperative.

We write so many tunes, we can’t even name them. We gave up trying. Our newest tunes are 10-56, 10-57, 10-58.  Then ’10’ stands for 2010.

Our album in progress is titled No Name, but that is so lame.  Maybe we’ll call it 10-10-10 and release it that day.  October 10 is going to be a huge wedding date.  If we don’t have a gig that day, we’ll disband and call the album Thank You for Your Kindnesses.

Y Cup is not a star show. It’s not about one musician standing above.  The rest of the band — the sidemen — I could replace them with one quick phone call — and I’d probably have a better group too — but I don’t.  The whole is less than the sum of the parts.  Add it up.

My musicians have skills.  One guy can belch whole notes.  Doesn’t feel academic either.

Non-Jews love our music.  Non-Christians too . . . Jewish people.

When I told my wife I was leaving Judaism, she said, “Then why are you saying a brocha over the wine?”  I told her, “It’s Friday night, that’s why.  TGIF.”

Klezmer is a niche I refuse to get boxed into.

We used to do klezmer, I’ll admit.  We played it on occasion.  Even Charlie Parker played klezmer at bar mitzvahs.  In his later days he didn’t.  Granted, he died at 34.

Y Cup plays what Parker would if he were playing bar mitzvahs today. That’s our esthetic.

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1 of 2 posts for 3/3/10.  Please see the next post too.
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Readers’ advisory:  This post, “Our Esthetic: We are not a Klezmer Band,” is fiction.   Made up. 
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See “Driving Mr. Klezmer” at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Beachwood, Ohio, Wed. March 24, 7 p.m.  Stratton, clarinet and spoken word (i.e. this blog), and Douglass, chauffeur and fuel-injected keyboards, plus vocals.  Jewish and American music.  DUO.

Yiddishe Cup at the College of Wooster (Ohio).  Sat. March 27, 9 p.m.
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Yiddishe Cup / Klezmer Guy has a  Facebook fan page.

Last month, when Oakwood Club, a Cleveland Heights yekkie (German Jewish) country club, went under, the powers-that-be (charitable foundations, city government, the club’s board of trustees) came to Yiddishe Cup for ideas to reinvent the place.  The machers were considering a Jewish theme park.

Yiddishe Cup said no thanks.  We weren’t going to participate in a Yiddishland Epcot.  Not our thing.  We won’t even play Fiddler on the Roof unless the audience begs.  And they do.  (And we play it.)

The Oakwood Club machers begged Yiddishe Cup to take a second look at the theme park idea.  We did.

The Yiddishland theme vied with the steering committee’s Plan B, called “Oakwood Park, an Oasis for People and Wildlife.”  That plan was just a front for owls, hawks, woodpeckers, songbirds, foxes, flying squirrels and dragonflies.  The old golf course would become a meadow.

Songbirds don’t pay the bills.

A Friday night klezmer shabbat would work.  It would feature a very lite, ecumenical Yiddishe Cup. Yiddishe Cup has a piece — “Friday Night Service-able” — with no words, like a jazz mass.

We’ve done the number a few times.  It’s basically a D-minor drone with a lot of modal improvising on top.  The composition is 45 minutes to an hour.  We’ve had a few listeners/worshippers “fall out,” or faint.

A Yiddishe Cup klezmer shabbat would draw visitors from Columbus, Pittsburgh and Detroit.  And they would want to stay over.  So we would put them up at Oakwood. We would find space.

Beat this: For $450 per person, the out-of-towner gets a Friday night klezmer shabbat (with brisket and fries), the hotel room, and a Saturday morning round-robin tennis tournament with kiddush (sanctification/vino) and coconut bars. Followed by a nap, followed by golf and swimming.

Need an extra day? Take a hike on the Tribute to Reform Rabbis exercise trail.

Sunday afternoon would be Jewish wedding central, featuring the house band, the one and only . . .
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Readers’ advisory: This post is made up.  Fiction. Based on the fact Oakwood Club is closing and is for sale.
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1 of 2 posts for 2/10/10.  Please see the post below too.

This just in . . . the lineup for the klezmer clarinetists’ all-star game:

Andy Statman ss

Good hands in the altissimo register.

Marcel Salomon 1b

More Dutch than Honus Wagner. Flying Dutchman II.

Margot Leverett 2b

Good with grace notes.

David Krakauer rf

Mr. Twinkle Toes. Moves lightly over the clarinet break.

Don Byron cf

Eccentric, yet loved. “That’s just Don being Don.”

Michael Winograd c

Young enough to crouch for three hours.

Ilene Stahl 3b

Best Jewish third-baseman since Al Rosen.

Glenn Dickson lf

Ripken-esque.  Can play the entire Nutcracker without water.

Kurt Bjorling dh

Can drive notes to any field: right, left, jazz, klez.

Moshe Berlin p

Has super-wiggly vibrato and Hoyt Wilhelm longevity.

Joel Rubin coach

Two-time NCAA klezmer coach of the year.

Hankus Netsky mgr

Best first name.  Better even than “Honus.”  It doesn’t matter  Hankus is  more of a sax/piano guy.

National anthem by Yiddishe Cup:

” . . . And the party planner’s red glare,
The seltzer bottles bursting in air.”
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2 of 2 posts for 7/8/09