Klezmer from Quebec

This was the advert in the Music and Beyond brochure:

Similar to the music they perform, Kleztory is a rich mosaic of cultures (Russian, Canadian, Quebecois and Moldavian) musical training (academic and self taught) and musical tastes (classical, contemporary, jazz, blues, country and folk) [...] These musicians perform with an emotion and a virtuosity that is the true spirit of klezmer.

I was at this event on July 9th, at the "All Saints Event Space" (as the church in Sandy Hill at the Chapel Street corner of Laurier Avenue is now called), no longer a church, per se. A local rabbi in a skullcap introduced them in relatively serious tones, but their performance was a riot of fun, amplified by loud speakers. The music they played and sang sounded like a juxtaposition of Quebecois and East European Jewish music, with the fiddle and folk rhythms on the one hand, and the wailing clarinet on the other, backed by guitar, double bass and accordion.

The singer / violinist --- la princesse, a Russian-Canadian francophone --- stole the show, vivacious and virtuoso, with her lithe slimness, long hair, red skirt, black tank top and radiant smile. She says that breaking the rules of classical music by playing these kinds of improvisations gave her a sense of liberté --- ça fait du bien! --- which came across! The other members of the group knew how to hold our attention too. The tall guitarist with a ponytail stepped forward from the back of the stage to persuade us that he was the King of Tadoussac, le roi de Tadoussac, at home on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, which made us laugh. The blonde, accordion-playing lady, also very francophone, he referred to as la reine. She said, thanking the audience for their appreciation at the end of the performance, that the musicians liked the way we had been granting them a moment of thoughtful silence before clapping, after the more sober moments. The clarinet player, incidentally a composer and orchestral conductor besides, comes from Slavic Europe, bringing that influence with him. The bass player, from Alberta, had began his career in a country music band before discovering klezmer. As a matter of fact, not one of these musicians is actually Jewish, but they all love acting as if they were. The bassist too was attention-catching when he spun his instrument on its axis while plucking along. Like jazz musicians, each member of the group has his or her solo moments.

Many lively dances in their repertoire swept us along, but there were also long-drawn-out, mournful interludes, with middle eastern quarter tones in the melodies, modal harmonies. Everything was done completely from memory, or improvised on the spot, perhaps. The music could go from rhythmic (the audience encouraged to clap the beat) to wailing slowness, to ultra-fast, all within one piece. There was so much movement on stage, knees bending, bodies swaying, changing places, that it might as well have been dancing.

Highly entertaining, for sure!

Here's an example of Kleztory's performances from three summers ago, in the Montreal area: