Klezmer times with old friends at the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival & Yiddish Summer Weimar5/8/2022 A Summer in Europe - feels so good! Performing at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow meant getting to perform with Grammy Award Winner Frank London’s Ghetto Songs project and an incredible line-up of artists including Karim Sulayman (vocals), Sveta Kundish (vocals), Brandon Ross (guitar/voice), Zeno De Rossi (drums), Ilya Schneyveys (keys & accordion) & Martin Lillich (bass) and of course once of my oldest musical pals and collaborators Frank (trumpets of many sorts). Frank has guided me through many a Klezmer journey and it was an honour to be part of this incredible band for the festival. The old Temple Synagogue in Kazimierz, Krakow could definitely have done with some air conditioning - it was about 40 degrees in there, but we made it through! I also managed to eat my body weight in Polish food - anything from cold Borsht mmm to Pierogi's, Georgian food and literally everything in between. Paying for it now buttttt now regr-eats!!!! I also got to hear my Chassidic Cantor fave from Brooklyn perform with some other incredible dudes featuring arrangements by the rather talented Jeremiah Lockwood. Lucky me. Ahhhh the Jewish eccentric-isms of Brooklyn, NYC. Thankyou to Shendl Copitman for the beautiful Weimar photos. Yiddish Summer Weimar is a different story - although I have been attending both festivals as a keen Klezmer-head kiddo it was wonderful to be back at this prolific Summer festival celebrating all things Yiddish, Klezmer and beyond through in-depth study into the language, music and dance in Weimar for weeks on end. Myself and Klemer Fiddler wonderboy & long-time pal Jake Shulman-Ment (lets call him JSM for short) have been talking about collaborating for years. Jake plays a lot of notes very fast and he never repeats himself twice. That guy has a way of bending rhythm and creating space and time in the music like no-one else. We did 3 shows over the weekend exploring some of our favourite tunes through improvisations and had a phat jam before I skipped town with some of my favourite musicians including Abigail Reisman, Mamaliga band (Rebecca, Matthias, Raffi, Rachel), Szilvia Csaranko, Susie Evans, Olga Baron, Lorry Black, Ilya Schneyveys, new found Klezmer cello brother Raffi Bowden and many many more.
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New England Conservatory : Boston and Around : New friends, Old friends : Practice room shedding : learning things : intense : wonderful : the most challenging thing I have ever done : burgers : Boston winter : Survivors Breakfast : Anthony Coleman : leading to an unknown world : Open Form Scores : Cello, Feet & Cello : Charles Mingus times in Jordan Hall : Graphic Scores : Practice Rooms : THE MosT CHALLENGING ThING I HAVE EVER DONe : Me & Mum : 33G Practice building sunset a short respite and beauty in the middle of the ugly urban : Me & Solomon at the Boston Ballet : More burgers : Hikes : Random late night adventures frolicking with Rebecca Mac & Matthias Kaufman : Crueller - like a donut kinda? : Deep fried Pickles : Cape Cod with Henry (cold but stunning) : Banjo, Cello, Oud : Me : Jake S-M & Ilya Schneyveys in the foresr : Me & Sam Kassirer at the NEC Gala : Beautiful Porch Fest Francesca from Hackney Style, if I come back there will be for sure MORE : Carla Kihlstedt : Mike Block : Hankus Netskey : Eden MacAdam-Somer : Nima Janmohammadi : Balla Kouyate : Mary Halverson : Charles Mingus : Iranian Music : Mande Music : Balafon : Timbre : Microtones : Play What You Sing | Sing What You Play : In One Year : Not Bad  It is never too late for anything. I took myself to school in my backwards heart led and determined way. Sometimes life makes no sense at all, but I like that a highlight of my time at NEC was getting to dive deep into the music subconscious and conscious of Charles Mingus. Him turning 100 was an opportunity for the School to celebrate his birthday and have students and faculty perform some of his seminal works or interpretations of them.
Celebrating a year since my debut EP In Eynem was released on the Phantom Limb label, I wanted to share this live performance of Me Sunowa which is featured on the EP with you all.
This live rendition of my arrangement of the traditional Sinti song Me Sunowa was filmed at my favourite shelter in Margate. A place I would stare at from my flat during the second lockdown in the UK during the Pandemic. The lyrics are in the Manouche dialect, the language spoken and sung by the Sinti Gypsies of Western Europe. I learned this song by my mentor and friend Tcha Limberger, a Belgian multi-instrumentalist that I was lucky to study with for several years in my 20's. This video was beautifully shot by Nathan Jones. Growing up as a liberal Jew in London in the 90's I don't remember having much fun in Synagogues or liking Jewish-related things. Through a serendipitous series of events I 'discovered' Klezmer music in my early 20's and this was partly what inspired me to spend some time studying at NEC in Boston. Knowing the Klezmer legacy of the school and having teachers there who were instrumental in the American Klezmer Revival period in the 1970's such as Hankus Netsky from the Klezmer Conservatory Band and having worked with numerous inspirational musicians from the Klezmer & Improvisation scene that had attended this school, I knew it was the place for me. During my time in Boston I was invited on several occasions to perform at the Boston Synagogue, the only surviving Synagogue in the centre of town, which was rebuilt after an aggressive regeneration programme in the 50's where the slummy down area was bulldozed. Nat Seelen, of Boston Klezmer band Ezekials Wheel skilfully curated a long season of events celebrating New Jewish Music and I am greatful to have had the chance to try out some of my own ideas there as well as to perform with Klezmer Fiddler and composer Abigale Reisman to showcase her original compositions. So rarely is there funding from within the Jewish community and particularly the Jewish Arts community to provide a solid platform for professionals who work with Jewish music directly to develop and showcase their work. It is great it is happening and it should happen more! Thank you to Nat for your enthusiasm and invitation to be part of the series, to Susan and the team at the Boston Synagogue. Pandemic mask times. (Much stricter in Massachusetts than the UK of course) They don't have Boris to contend with over there. It was to meat new musical collaborators and keep my creative focus during those cold winter months in Boston. Supporting by JArts Boston. Note to self...NEVER FORGET TO BUY COFFEE BEFORE A SNOW STORM!!!!!! Hackney Girl lesson learned, yes. ME being an absolute wimp? Makes a Margate (UK seaside town for those who don't know) Winter look chill - never mind that sea wind. What about the Ice, Layers upon Layers of SNOW, no-one even talks to you. No late night cafes with Hot Toddies. Just cold, cold colddddddddddddddd. But also beautiful. Check out some of my Winter wonderland adventures - all a weirdo explorer from London could ever want :) N.B. Side note - Greasy shitty cheese pizza is a must - in those icey times it goes down like water and seeps out into your pores immediately in the best way possible. 
A major highlight of my time at NEC was performing Stay On It by Julius Eastman.
Every Monday I got to work with Anthony Coleman in his weekly ensemble, Survivors Breakfast. You can imagine why the name... One day Hannah Dunton, a killer bass player in the Jazz department asked if we could work on Stay On It by Julius Eastman. Me being such a folky weirdo I embarrassingly hadn't come across his music before. It is an incredible piece of music!!!!!!! Eastman was such a strong proponant for doing things his way, and being Black and Gay in the Avant Garde in the 70's in the US made him even more of an outsider. I wish we'd gotten to meet. You can find out more about him, his work and contribution to everything here and here. Luckily Anthony had access to a score deduced from some of the favoured recordings of the piece, as it was never written down by Eastman in his short lifetime. So we worked on it, at first it didn't make sense, but then eventually - as is often the case with some of the best things - it feel into place, we found a pace with the piece, we found a way of listening to and playing with each other and finding our own voices within the parameters of the vague yet specific instructions for each section. It's a hefty length of a piece to perform and with Anthony's guidance we pulled it off. It was a super fun way to get to know fellow improvisers and experimenters at the school and I loved performing the piece. What an energy. Anthony really understood how to get inside the music, a rare skill which I appreciate so much. Check out the two seminal performances below of the piece. I think you will like. Thank you Julius for your amazing music and for being you and keeping it real in a time where it was even much tougher than now. An honour to collaborate with Kaia Berman-Peters, Solomon Caldwell, Miguel Landestoy & Sahana Narayanan on reworking some of Abbey Lincoln's seminal works including 'Down Here Below' & 'And It's Supposed To Be Love'.
I have been in love with Abbey Lincoln's music for a long long time. I am not a natural Jazz head and didn't grow up with Jazz but I discovered her music in my early 20's whilst on a road trip in the US. I didn't really understand what i'd gotten in to but I knew it was special and Abbey's music has been with me ever since. Years later I find myself at NEC, a path I chose for a multitude of reasons, but the best ones were the one's I couldn't have predicted. It turns out MacArthur fellow & NEC professor Ran Blake was a good pal of Abbey's and every year the Contemporary Improvisation department do a spotlight concert of her work. And It's Supposed To Be Love is one of my all time favourite songs, and to get to explore it, know it, break it down and mess with it was a privilege. I was coached by Ran, Anthony Coleman, Christine Correa & Eden MacAdam-Somer. I'd never really been through that process before. I really appreciate how seriously musicians treat other musicians and their work in the US. Going deep meant uncompromisingly going deep. I need that. Thank you pedagogy. I got to collaborate with new friends on the arrangements - a challenging but rewarding process. And we performing in the legendary Jordan Hall - a place where the seats are wonky and creak and the acoustics are second to none - esp. for CELLO! ha. You can listen back to the full concert above. xx SONG FOR A SHELL from Francesca on Vimeo.
I created Song For A Shell forwards and backwards across the seas. The film was make on Denman Island, an Island off Vancouver Island accessible by boat, after having stumbled across a Buddhist retreat on Denman on a site build by the original founders of Greenpeace. It was a still and enriching day full of adventure and new friendships, a short skinny dip (sea was cold!!!) and contemplation whilst watching the sun go down.
I started recording the main part of the song just before the Pandemic and wanted to finish it but somehow time stopped in an unhelpful way. Now, during the cold, long, and beautiful nights of January during a Boston Winter as I prepare for Semester two of my time at New England Conservatory, I found space to finish it and am really happy with how it turned out. Channelling some of my new musical breadth and with a hyper-focused spirit i'm happy to share Song For a Shell with you now. Enjoy. Francesca x
I AM SAFE INSIDE YOUR SHELL
LOOK INSIDE YOU WILL NOT SEE WASHED UP ON THE SALTY SHORE THEN ONE DAY YOUR’RE GONE GONE I AM SAFE INSIDE MY SHELL LOOK INSIDE YOU WILL NOT SEE WASHED UP ON THE SALTY SHORE THEN ONE DAY YOU’RE GONE GONE SHORE. GONE. SHORE. GONE. GONE. GONE Film - Francesca Ter-Berg Lyrics & Music by Francesca Ter-Berg Recorded & Mixed by Francesca Ter-Berg Filmed on Denman Island, BC, Canada Recorded in Margate, UK Mixed in Boston, USA Bough Talk, my multi-channel site-specific installation, commissioned by the Margate NOW Festival 21' is now up on Soundcloud. Be prepared to be fully immersed in strings, field recordings, loops, textures and more. A very magical realm to find yourself in - GO CHCK IT OUT VIA THE LINK ABOVE. Thanks to Anna Colin, Claire Orme, Dan Chilcott, Dan Scott, Shamica Ruddock & Nathan Ryan-Jones for your support :) |
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