Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion’s influences are international, however the sound they create is uniquely their very own.
Laura Carbone/Kathleen Tagg
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Laura Carbone/Kathleen Tagg
Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion’s influences are international, however the sound they create is uniquely their very own.
Laura Carbone/Kathleen Tagg
Clarinetist David Krakauer and pianist Kathleen Tagg have been thrilled after they have been invited to a chamber music retreat in rural upstate New York in the course of the early months of the pandemic. It was a chance to flee their cramped Manhattan house and reside for 2 weeks on a farm within the Adirondack Mountains close to the Canadian border.
The couple arrived in early June 2020 however ended up staying three months, prompting their host Angela Brown to jokingly seek advice from them as “the squatters.” Brown is the director of Hill and Hollow Music and, it seems, an avid folks dancer. Little did she know that by introducing Krakauer and Tagg to the native folks dance scene, she had a significant affect on their new musical undertaking, pointing it in an sudden path.
“One of many issues that I used to be lacking and that I complained about was that the dances had all been canceled,” Brown recalled. “I believe they have been sort of fascinated {that a} thriving dance tradition exists right here within the Adirondacks.”
“After we have been up within the north nation in that environment the seeds received planted in our head,” stated Krakauer. “That is very attention-grabbing. There may be this little doorway right here.”
Brown does English Nation Dancing to hornpipe, which is each a dance and music kind that originated within the British Isles and dates again to the sixteenth Century. She performed CDs of hornpipe music for Krakauer and Tagg.
Hornpipe is a dance and music kind that dates again to the sixteenth Century.
peakfiddler
YouTube
Throughout their keep within the north nation, Krakauer and Tagg began writing music based mostly on recognizable dance kinds, together with a sq. dance, a polka, a Jewish hora, a calypso and, in fact, hornpipe. That music contains the debut album of Mazel Tov Cocktail Party, their new band. It is his hope, Krakauer stated, that the music itself conveys the necessity for “empathy and a deeper understanding of the opposite.”
Tagg describes Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion as a really numerous band, and she or he and Krakauer “invite individuals to come back as they’re.”
“We’re not asking them to be one thing they are not,” she stated. “We’re not going to try to make a sq. dance that feels like we’re inside a sq. dance ourselves as a result of we’re not.”
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The standout observe on the new album is “North Nation Sq. Dance,” whose lyrics are rapped and handle to sound like directions for an precise sq. dance. A lot of the music video is previous black and white archival movie of individuals clogging.
Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion performing “North Nation Sq. Dance.”
David Krakauer
YouTube
“We hope that folks will seize that observe and make up some new sq. dances,” stated Krakauer, who is taken into account a virtuoso in klezmer, jazz and classical music.
He first burst onto the klezmer scene as a member of the Grammy Award-winning band The Klezmatics. His former bandmate Frank London, who has mixed klezmer with quite a few types of world music, considers Krakauer one of many best clarinet gamers on the planet.
“While you hear David, you understand it is him fairly rapidly,” London informed NPR.
Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion is paying homage to one other multi-racial band Krakauer based, Abraham, Inc., which mixes klezmer, funk and hip-hop. Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion’s bassist, Jerome Harris, has carried out with Abraham, Inc., as has its vocalist, Sarah MK, a Black French-Canadian soul singer and rapper. She wrote the lyrics for the band’s c alypso observe, an homage to Harry Belafonte. Along with Krakauer and Tagg, the band contains percussionist Martin Shamoonpour, an Iranian immigrant, and Yoshie Fruchter, an Orthodox Jew who performs a imply funk guitar.
David Krakauer, co-founder of Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion. His klezmer-infused clarinet enjoying runs by means of the band’s songs.
Laura Carbone
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Laura Carbone
David Krakauer, co-founder of Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion. His klezmer-infused clarinet enjoying runs by means of the band’s songs.
Laura Carbone
Krakauer’s klezmer-infused clarinet enjoying is the musical thread that runs by means of these dance-inspired tunes. Combining klezmer with different ethnic dance music has a protracted historical past, says London of The Klezmatics.
“Klezmer musicians have all the time performed a combination of so-called Jewish explicit dances just like the bulgar or the sher, and co-territorial dances, the polka-mazurkas and waltzes and all these different dances of our neighbors. That is a part of the custom,” London stated.
After a number of months of working remotely, the band members met each other within the flesh and carried out collectively for the primary time within the Adirondacks final summer season. Harris was wanting to rehearse with Shamoonpour, who performs a Center Jap body drum generally known as a daf.
Martin Shamoonpour on daf whereas performing with Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion.
Laura Carbone
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Laura Carbone
Martin Shamoonpour on daf whereas performing with Mazel Tov Cocktail Occasion.
Laura Carbone
“As a rhythm part participant, you need to get a really feel on your rhythm part colleagues and also you try this by enjoying collectively and listening to how every of you is approaching the music and responding to one another,” Harris defined. “After we lastly all received collectively, it was actually fairly a wealthy musical homecoming.”
The primary efficiency passed off at a marina car parking zone in Plattsburgh, NY with a lot of the viewers of their automobiles. The next day the band performed at Hill and Hole Music’s farm, the place Angela Brown studies, “Even the chickens have been dancing!”
In late March the band’s New York Metropolis debut passed off in a boxing gymnasium a day earlier than leaving on its European tour. The band gelled in Europe, in keeping with Tagg, the place it performed giant auditoriums in addition to small golf equipment. Audiences have been up on their toes and dancing “from the primary observe,” stated Tagg.
The band returns to Europe for a second tour in August.
