Would you like to play gypsy-like music of the Eastern European Jews this summer? This will be my third summer of teaching at the annual Pick and Bow folk music retreat weekend held in Durham North Carolina. This year I’m offering this ensemble for players of any level (whether you’re a beginner or an advanced player, I promise to find you something good to do in the band!)

The 2013 PickNBow camp starts Friday July 26 at 7 pm and ends Sunday July 28 at 6 pm. If you love to play music but you’ve been too shy to try playing with other folks, this is a good time to give it a try. I’m calling it “cabaret orchestra” as well because we’ll try some of the luscious Yiddish theater songs I’ve been researching from the 1930s. If you want to try singing in Yiddish with the orchestra, that’s a possibility too. If you’re coming from out of town, I may be able to find you a free place to stay.

You can hear some samples of music we might try here: click to hear (free) some cuts from Cabaret Warsaw, our cd of 1920s and 1930s theater music.

See you there, I hope…

Cost of the Pick’n'Bow Camp in 2013 is $180 and includes other classes if you like, voice lessons and guitar, mandolin, ukulele, banjo, harmony singing, fiddle, and more. It also includes faculty concert and camper concerts and impromptu private lessons and student jam sessions.

It’s great if you read music but it’s fine if you don’t, we’ll teach by ear and provide mp3 tracks (like the one here) in advance. Email me if you’re interested: jane@mappamundi.com

If you’re interested you can follow along as I post my mp3 versions of the songs and the sheet music with melodies, chords, transliterations, translations, and indications of where you can find the original songs.

Although Amazon only allows you to hear a few seconds of any song, our music is also sold through the Mappamundi at Bandcamp site and you can listen to all our songs, all the way through, for free before deciding if you want to buy them. Give it a try!

Krampus, the bad face of Father Christmas

In the spirit of scary beasts for Christmas, I modestly present my lens on The Laily Worm, another (supposedly) mythical creature who sat under a tree and ate knights who wandered past. You would think all the metal of their armor would be indigestible, but perhaps it was a good source of iron. My Celtic duo the Pratie Heads recorded an ancient Scottish song about the Laily Worm and you can hear it for free (and even buy it).

Listen to THE LAILY WORM for free!

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In the old days we’d put on a cd, then listen to the whole thing. It could have a beginning, a middle, and an end – it could build – it became the sum of its parts. Because a musician could be reasonably confident that the music would be heard in sequence, there could be variety between the songs without the listener going: “Huh?”

Since I’ve been a musician in the Jewish world for decades – I directed the Triangle Jewish Chorale for 14 years and have played klezmer and yiddish theater songs and tunes with my since 1994 – I am very tired of the few Hannukah songs in existence. Some of them are very sweet, but they’re short, simple, and in foreign languages. Hanukkah songs in English tend to be sappy and annoying.

So last Chanukah, when my pianist Aviva and I were hired to do a few shows, I decided to write some songs myself – I set them to swing tunes that I love. It was so much fun it seemed a no-brainer to put out a whole album of tunes I love with new Hanukah words set to them.

And so I did. BUT. One song is an old-fashioned tango, another is a cowboy ballad, one is a re-purposed Gilbert & Sullivan song, some are folk songs and some are pop tunes and it’s all rather like the story about the blind men feeling the different parts of the elephant – depending on which song you encounter randomly out in the world, you’ll get a very different idea about what this must be.

In addition, a lot of my favorite old tunes – ragtime numbers, for instance – start in a leisurely fashion. Music doesn’t do that these days, because it has to make an impression in the first three seconds or impatient consumers will have moved on.

My ex-husband used to say the most successful people were those who make good first impressions. They may not be the best people, but the people whose charm blooms more slowly often never get the chance to reveal it. I think the same thing is happening to music.

Have a listen yourself and see what you think.

Mrs. Maccabee’s Kitchen: New Hanukah Songs by Mappamundi

Great place for wedding ceremony or reception: the Shared Visions Center

I lost interest after she got married but from time to time I update it. Today, for instance, I posted information about the Shared Visions Retreat Center, in Durham but close to the Chapel Hill / Orange County NC line.

Jay Miller bought the historic Murphy School and lovingly refurbished it at great expense. It’s a gorgeous old site now, on the Historic Register, with plenty of parking, a kitchen, and many rooms you can use in addition to the beautiful auditorium where the Pratie Heads (that’s me and Bob Vasile) just did our 30th anniversary St Patrick’s Day celebration. We love that space.

There’s plenty of parking!! And everybody who comes gets a free copy of our cd “We Did It! Songs of People Behaving Badly.” Also, there will be delicious baked goods at intermission (cooked by yours truly) to benefit the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate Program. (I’m a mentor with the program and my mentee will be there selling brownies and chocolate chip cookies and applesauce raisin cake and whatever else I can cook up between now and then!)

Tickets will be $10 at the door, or they are $8 in advance (until noon on Saturday) from our website: Irish Music duo the Pratie Heads. People who buy advance tickets also get a brand-new mp3 of a wonderful sea song, just recorded a couple weeks ago. Come on out!