Only Barry (leader & accordion), Sarah (violin), Jeffery (flute), Toby (piano) and I were at klezmer class last night.
After playing our standard opening warm-up medley, we listened to a CD of four tunes which we started playing this session. They’re from a book/CD set Fleytmuzik that Toby got at klezcamp. After we picked out jaws up off the floor we set about playing them, at somewhere between half and two-thirds the tempo that they were on the recording. These are the tunes I entered into Finale to get B-flat charts of, and I’ve been practicing them a little. Not enough to play the faster ones comfortably, even at the reduced tempo we did.
Toby told us about her husband’s summer. He had gone to Israel, to a town next to the Lebanese border where they had lived many years ago, to do voulunteer work during the war. Most of the younger, healthier, more prosperous people had left town for the duration, leaving those too old, sick, and poor to flee. Toby’s husband was bringing food and supplies to the people who had stayed behind, sometimes delivering it while the Hezbollah rockets were flying past. He just told her, “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”