Welcome to the official blog of the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music!
Read on for interviews with our featured artists, previews of new music, and our thoughts about life, the universe, and everything.
Interview with Abigale Reisman from Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band
October 6, 2022
“For pretty much all of my time with Ezekiel’s Wheels, we’ve been playing at Jewish events like weddings and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs,” recalls Reisman. “I am quite grateful for the experience to play music in a very functional setting — especially for dance. It's hard for me to separate the two. I don't know what it would be like if I were playing in a klezmer band and not also playing for these events! It has definitely taught us the importance of having a medley of tunes that either keep the energy up or change the energy a little bit to get the dancers to continue dancing. I think that it all influenced the way that we create music in the band. Playing for dancing is probably the most influential and important thing that has shaped us as a band in our energetic style of playing.”
Interview with Fabiola Méndez
October 6, 2022
“I think my main goal as a musician and as an artist is for people to learn about the cuatro, to appreciate what the cuatro is and what it can bring.” Convincingly, Fabiola Méndez says this with cuatros of various styles and colors propped up behind where she sits for our Zoom interview. “Even though it is an instrument that’s from the Puerto Rican culture, it can be used in any genre and anyone can play it. It doesn’t matter what I do or what particular focus I have in all of my projects — I just want people to learn about the cuatro and appreciate the cuatro. To just love it as I do.” In Méndez’s hands, it’s hard not to start loving the cuatro, too.
Interview with Ilene Stahl
October 6, 2022
Music is like food. I’m a person who likes to cook; I am interested in seasonings and cooking processes and techniques and how food is made, but, really, at the end of the day, food should taste delicious. What everyone who cooks food and cares about food wants is to have somebody taste their food and find it delicious – instantly delicious! Whether that person trained at a fancy cooking school and understands all the elaborate techniques that went into it and can say, “Oh, that’s an interesting use of basil,” or not, it should just be instantaneously delicious. This is what I want klezmer – Klezperanto – to be.
Interview with Derek David
October 6, 2022
“I have such a deep and close relationship with Bach.” David motions above his computer screen. “I have him above my desk here, I have a portrait of Bach in every room of my apartment—not including the bathroom, but including the kitchen.” After talking with Derek David on a Tuesday afternoon, one not only learns that he really, really loves Bach, but also that his attunement to musical legacies enables him to be the profound composer and teacher that he is today.
Interview with Matthew Shifrin
October 6, 2022
When asked about the origin of his newest project, Matthew Shifrin laughs and says, “It’s kind of a funny story.” And it is, in more ways than one. “I thought, oh, I need something to do because I don't know, I need a side project,” he recalls in regard to this project’s birth. The musical — a yet-to-be-titled, one-man show — came into being after he received a grant last fall. Inspired by his late grandmother’s memoirs of the Holocaust and the rest of her life, the piece is witty and profound, which becomes clear as he shares two of its songs over the course of our Zoom call. But we learned that what Matthew once considered a “side project” became increasingly difficult as the obstacle of accessibility arose between him and his research.
Interview with Moshe Elmakias
October 3, 2022
“It was a lot, but I learned that I can do way more during the day than I can think of. If you use every single moment in the day, you will say, ‘Wow, I did a lot today!’” This comment from Moshe Elmakias during our interview with him was pretty emblematic of the whole 45-minute conversation. The Israeli jazz pianist, who is not even 30 years old, seems to have already had a lifetime’s worth of a career.
Interview with Yasmin Tal of Untitled Roots
October 3, 2022
“For me, the joy in music is the community. The being with people, and making it with people. It could be professionals who are grown-ups, it could be with students who are young people, it’s just fulfilling to me.” After our Wednesday morning Zoom conversation with Yasmin Tal, we were quick to understand that her music goes beyond sound itself. Whether improvising with a live audience or studying texts to write new compositions, the Haifa-born artist is keenly aware of the inextricable relationships between music, other media, and people.
Interview with Rebecca Mac and Mattias Kaufmann of Mamaliga
October 3, 2022
“'Hey! So I’m actually in an accordion factory in Italy right now,' Rebecca Mac says at the start of our Tuesday morning Zoom interview. Mac is helping her partner and fellow band member, Mattias Kaufmann, shop for a new instrument. Pausing briefly to accept a glass of slivovitz from the factory owner, Mac, a violinist in the Boston-based klezmer band Mamaliga, is right at home in the keyboard-studded warehouse."
Interview with Abigale Reisman
February 23, 2022
"So from the very beginning, starting from the very beginning… I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. And I started playing violin when I was a month shy of five, and was just doing the violin path for my childhood and high school years and playing classical music, but alongside that I did go to Jewish Day School for eight years, and synagogue, so I was immersed in Jewish melodies."
Interview with Yaeko Miranda
November 3, 2021
"Okay, so I grew up in Boston - in Cambridge - and started violin at the age of three. Classical, you know, Suzuki. I had that kind of upbringing. But one thing is that I came from a very artistic family. Everyone's an artist. So I grew up with a lot of music in my home. My father being from El Salvador, I listened to a lot of music from Latin America, not just from Central America, but from South America. And my dad was also a really big jazz fan - like tons of jazz, he had a huge record collection. My mother being from France we listened to a lot of French music and singers - actually she really loved a lot of jazz, too."
Interview with Zach Mayer
October 5, 2021
"I like, I love, learning new klezmer melodies and transcribing new niggunim. I've always been able to compose songs. My mom told me that I used to say, 'I have a bag of songs in my head. And sometimes one just falls out.' And I frankly think it's the same situation that happens. Now maybe the songs are already there, maybe a better way to say it is that there are already millions of songs every moment, they’re already in the universe. And if I tune myself into that stream of abundance, then maybe I could catch on to one of these new melodies of the moment and bring it to people."