Tanz! With Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers
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Artist:
Dave Tarras & Musicker Brothers
Label: Sony Category: Music Average customer rating: Format: Original recording remastered Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 UPC: 696998632028 EAN: 0696998632028 ASIN: B00006640F Release Date: 2002-04-30 |
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Customer Reviews:
Great Klezmer, but not that swinging.......2006-07-21
A Classic.......2002-11-07
Ambrosia.......2002-08-10
Dave Tarras (1897 to 1989) was a Klezmer clarinetist of legendary talent, schooled in classical music by his Ukrainian Jewish family, which had performed for generations. Tarras' father was a wedding poet (badkhn) and trombonist, who began teaching his son to read and write music, and to play the flute, when he only nine. At 13, dissatisfied with the flute's quality, Tarras studied clarinet with a local player for three weeks before he could "play a little," meaning he was expert enough to play at a non-Jewish wedding.
Tarras was exposed to but somewhat insulated from the brutal World War I era Ukrainian anti-Semitism; he escaped serving in the Tsar's army by playing in a military band and quickly graduating to conductor. He also conveniently played the guitar and balalaika.
By 1921, though, pogroms and the Russian Revolution had overwhelmed the family and Tarras left for New York, where his older sister had emigrated some time earlier. He started in a furrier factory at $10 a week, working up to $50 for a 50-hour week, with overtime.
After a year, he finally replaced the clarinet that had been destroyed by fumigation at Ellis Island and took a small job in a Brooklyn catering hall. He was soon playing in a band with Joseph Cherniavsky's Yiddish American Jazz Band.
One cut, Rumanian Fantasy, is also available on Tarras' Klezmer Music 1925-56. But otherwise, this is music I have not heard elsewhere. And every bar is brilliant, from trills and harmonies to the rich embroidery of a Middle Eastern Yemenite Tanz.
The recording was cut in 1955 at Columbia's 30th Street Studios in New York, but remastering has eliminated any tinny quality it might have had then. Distilled here is a set of remarkably colorful and vibrant quality, as if it had been produced yesterday. If notes could cry, this CD would produce a flood every time one played it. Alyssa A. Lappen
Hypnotic, Swinging, Amazing.......2002-05-09
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