Podcasts about lev ljova zhurbin

During the epic annual Zlatne Ustne Goldenfest, the crowd was worked into a frenzy by a rollicking set by LITVAKUS, Zisl Slepovich's klezmer band.  We get a chance to hang backstage with the maestro and renaissance man, Zisl Slepovich.   Zisl Slepovitch (Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch) is an internationally renowned multiinstrumentalist (clarinetist, saxophonist, flutist, pianist, keyboardist, singer), composer, arranger, translator, and music and Yiddish educator. Slepovitch is the founder and leader of the Litvakus klezmer band, Zisl Slepovitch Trio, Assistant Music Director / Music Director / Music Coordinator in many productions by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, including the Drama Desk Award nominated operetta The Golden Bride (2015/16) and Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish directed by Joel Grey. Zisl Slepovitch has taught Yiddish language and culture The New School, served as educator and artist in residence at BIMA at Brandeis University, guest artist at University of Michigan, Indiana University, and Amherst College and Vassar College, a teaching fellow and performing artist at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York City), Vienna Klezmer Workshop (Vienna), The Moscow Sefer Center, and Eshkolot Project (both in Moscow). Some of Slepovitch’s theater, film, and TV contributions include consulting and acting in Defiance (Paramount), Eternal Echoes (Sony Classical), Rejoice with Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot (PBS),  original scores for the documentary Funeral Season, children’s musical The King of Chelm, ballet Di Tsvey Brider, and many more. See Zisl Slepovitch on     Zisl Slepovitch has performed/ recorded / collaborated / worked with / wrote for Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Ron Rifkin, Joel Grey, Edward Zwick, Michael Alpert, Zalmen Mlotek, Paul Brody, Psoy Korolenko, Frank London, Lipa Schmeltzer, Yale Strom, Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, Cantor Yaakov “Yanky” Lemmer, and many others. Slepovitch brought over from his home country Belarus a rich ethnographic collection of Belarusian Jewish music folklore collected together with Dr. Nina Stepanskaya. The collection was used in Slepovitch’s his multimedia concert program Traveling the Yiddishland. Some of Yiddish poetry by Zisl Slepovitch has been set to music and published in Israel, Russia, and the US. Over the years, Jewish music and Yiddish culture have remained the core elements of his creative inspirations. Get the music by Zisl’s LITVAKUS’ klezmer band: Bandcamp (also as CDs), iTunes, Amazon MP3, CDBaby, and more!

Work for string orchestra by Ljova performed by A Far Cry on December 8, 2013 and work for clarinet trio by Brahms performed by Musicians from Marlboro on March 25, 2012.Ljova: Vjola SuiteBrahms: Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114On our podcast today, we have a pair of musical melting pots: pieces that combine diverse musical influences.We’ll begin with a performance by A Far Cry of Vjola Suite, a fun contemporary dance suite by a young Brooklyn-based composer and performer who goes by the pen name “Ljova”. This suite was inspired by Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin’s experiences living and playing in New York City, with its myriad cultures. The piece draws on the folk music of Eastern Europe, West Africa, Cuba, and the Middle East. It is – as the composer puts it – “a collection of lively dances, for which the steps have not yet been choreographed.”After the suite, we’ll hear some more dances, in Johannes Brahms’ clarinet trio in A Minor, Op. 114. Brahms’s dances aren’t quite so geographically diverse, but they are, in their own way, a melting pot of then-contemporary influences as well. There is a flavor of the gypsy tunes, the refined Viennese waltz, and the more raucous Austrian Ländler, which features a spirited solo for the clarinetist. Performing the Brahms we’ll hear a trio of musicians from the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute.First, the chamber orchestra A Far Cry performing the Vjola Suite.

Anyone who has had to give a speech at a wedding or deliver a Powerpoint presentation at the office knows the symptoms: sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, even nausea. That age-old curse, stage fright, is nothing new. But for classical musicians it's come with a considerable stigma. Despite the fact that famous artists like Vladimir Horowitz, Renee Fleming and Glenn Gould have all experienced crippling performance anxiety, a hush-hush attitude has long prevailed. "The reason people don't talk about it is because it would affect your opportunities,” Diane Nichols, a psychotherapist who calms a stage-fright class in Juilliard's evening division, told host Naomi Lewin (listen to the full discussion above). “How seriously is someone going to look at you if they're auditioning you, if they know you have a history of choking or of panicking?” But in an age when people broadcast details of their daily lives through social media, there are also signs that the taboo may be lifting. Holly Mulcahy, a violinist who won the job of concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera in May, says there’s a greater openness than even a decade ago, and new methods of coping. "Some of my teachers in conservatory days would gladly carry around a flask of Scotch and take it before they went on stage," she said. “But I don’t see that in any of the orchestras that I've played in recently.” Instead, Mulcahy and other orchestra musicians increasingly turn to beta blockers. According to Mulcahy and other musicians who spoke with WQXR, in some backstage areas, they're passed around like chewing gum or mints. Mulcahy recalls panicked colleagues calling "Oh my God, does anybody have any Inderal?" Beta blockers have been common in classical music since the 1970s. Originally prescribed to treat high blood pressure, they became performance enablers when it became clear that Inderal (the brand name) controlled stage fright. As long ago as 1987, a study of the 51 largest orchestras in the U.S. found one in four musicians using them to improve their live performances, with 70 percent of those getting their pills illicitly. But there are new stresses since a generation ago. Fewer jobs and heightened competition mean less room for error. For opera singers, looks are becoming as important as voice. A 2012 study from the University of Paderborn in Germany found that 30 percent of orchestra musicians suffer from stage fright; 13 percent said it was severe. Mulcahy finds that not taking beta blockers puts an aspiring orchestra player at a competitive disadvantage. “When I’d get to the finals of orchestra auditions and I wouldn’t be winning, the people that would be winning were the ones that had the beta blockers,” she noted. Even so, she cautions that Inderal does not "enhance" a performance, nor is it a cure-all: "It doesn’t help your concentration. It doesn’t help your confidence. All it does is it keeps the shakes down and keeps the panic to a minimal level." Some musicians still find other means of managing nerves. Lev "Ljova" Zhurbin, a violist and composer, was once steered towards everything from psychotherapy to eating bananas. He eventually overcame stage fright by taking a non-traditional career path that didn’t involve constant auditions. "I’ve become heavily invested in the music that I play,” said Zhurbin, whose ensemble, Ljova and the Kontraband, combines gypsy, folk and chamber music. Nichols believes that stage fright will never go away entirely, and maybe it shouldn't. “I do think that it can be managed and careers are not devastated because of stage fright right now, because of Inderal.” .chart_div { width: 600px; height: 300px; } loadSurvey( "coping-stage-fright", "survey_coping-stage-fright"); Photos: 1) Bo Huang 2) Anna Rozenblat

The four men of Brooklyn Rider arrived at the WQXR Café on a recent morning feeling groggy and jet-lagged, having returned three days earlier from a tour to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. But it was time to rally. Their set list would feature exuberant pieces inspired by the music of Eastern Europe, ancient Persia and beyond. Travel -- in a metaphorical sense -- has been an ongoing theme for this genre-bending string quartet, whose members cut their teeth in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. The group's sixth and most recent album, “A Walking Fire,” is named after a poem by the 13th-century poet Rumi, and it includes Bartok's String Quartet No. 2 as well as several new pieces. Among them is Culai by Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, a Russian-born, New York-based composer who has collaborated with the quartet on several occasions. Here is the movement "Love Potion, Expired." With its rollicking, jagged rhythms, the work is a tribute to Nicolae "Culai" Neacsu, the late violinist and vocalist of the Gypsy string ensemble, Taraf de Haiidouks. It's also consistent with Brooklyn Rider's embrace of non-Western styles. In an interview on WNYC’s Soundcheck, violinist Colin Jacobsen noted how Debussy was profoundly influenced by the Javanese gamelan music he heard at the Paris International Exposition in 1889. Similarly, Bartok drew on the folk music he heard while traveling the countryside of Hungary and Romania with a tape recorder in the early 1900s. Brooklyn Rider has not only played those composers' works, but also collaborated with artists like the Chinese pipa player Wu Man, the Japanese shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki and Kayhan Kalhor, the Iranian master of the kamancheh, or Persian fiddle. Jacobsen's own Three Miniatures for String Quartet, featured on "A Walking Fire," was inspired by the Islamic art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which reopened in 2011. The work particularly draws on a miniature painting tradition "in which epic stories of love, heroism and allegories of human folly are played out in tiny portraits of incredible detail and texture." The movement “Majnun’s Moonshine” opens the quartet's café concert and can be heard in the audio above. To round out their set, the quartet performed Zhurbin’s arrangement of Doina Oltului (“Song of the River Olt”), a traditional Romanian song. With its bent notes, rhythmic bowing and heavy offbeats, the piece seemed to momentarily transform the cafe into a rustic village tavern. Video: Amy Pearl & Kim Nowacki; Sound: Edward Haber; Text & Production: Brian Wise