Yiddish Musical Revue at WRT
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Westchester Reform Temple will host a musical theater afternoon on Sunday, March 7 at 4 p.m. The program, “Mama’s Loshn Kugel,” is a traveling Yiddish revue featuring classic songs and sketches from the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater.
Performed in Yiddish with English translation supertitles, the performance is easy to follow and suitable for both children and adults. As its name implies, “Mama’s Loshn Kugel” is a veritable Yiddish kugel, or pudding, with a mixture of humor and song, longing and celebration.
Theater critic Howard Shapiro of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote of a recent production: “The jokes were flying. The music was piping. The translations were beaming.”
The Folksbiene Yiddish Theater is a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve, promote and develop Yiddish theater for current and future generations to enhance the understanding and appreciation of Yiddish culture as a necessary component of Jewish life.
This Yiddish Culture Program is funded by the Cantor Stephen H. Merkel Fund, and is free and open to the public. Westchester Reform Temple is located at 255 Mamaroneck Road in Scarsdale, N.Y. For directions or information, call the Temple at 914-723-7727, email [email protected], or visit www.wrtemple.org.
Heathcote is Alive with the Sound of Music
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The dramatic skills of 84 Heathcote students were on display Saturday, February 6th, when “The Sound of Music” was performed at Heathcote Elementary School. All of our favorite characters from this Rodgers and Hammerstein classic were brought to life in spectacular fashion, from Captain Von Trapp to Maria to Uncle Max. The soaring voices of the Heathcote players filled a packed auditorium for two sold out performances.
In just two weeks, these budding thespians learned their lines, choreography and songs under the guidance of the talented staff at KJK Productions. This show was the third production sponsored and managed by the Heathcote PTA Performing Arts Committee, chaired by Jane Cohen and Kathleen Libman. All who attended will remember the performance as one of their favorite things. Photos courtesy of Jon Thaler. See hundreds more photos of the show and purchase your own at www.JonThaler.com
All photos by Jon Thaler
From Scarsdale: The Band Eclypse
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They were about to take the stage. The familiar feeling of a free fall set in their stomach. All eight of their hearts pounded as adrenaline surged through their veins.
The Westchester County Battle of the Bands was neither their first nor their biggest gig; in fact they had played numerous times for a crowd of 2,000 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Despite this, The Band Eclypse felt the pressure of a competition and sensed the anticipation of an unknown crowd.
“As we took the stage to sound check, it was like getting dressed in front of strangers,” guitarist Matthew Yaspan said. “We were preparing ourselves and making sure our sounds matched each others; all the while 500 pairs of eyes were watching us.”
The band’s nerves were evident as they began playing their set before being introduced. They were forced to stop a few seconds into their first song to receive their formal introduction. After that, however, their performance was nearly flawless. The crowd cheered and screamed enough to win the band the prize for popular acclaim. Their performance was lively and active and showed a great level of chemistry between the members.
One wouldn’t be able to tell just by watching them, but The Band Eclypse has only been playing together for ten months, and had formed to play just one gig. Their history began when lead emcee’s Daniel Lonner (known as L.E.D.) and Jeremy Jordan-Jones (known as Triple J) as well as producer Scott Jacobson were accepted in an audition to play at the annual Amateur Night competition hosted by the Apollo Theater, a landmark in New York City. “The intensity of our audition was not at a high enough level to win the competition; we needed something more,” said Lonner. The trio recruited members to form a full band to ensure their victory in the four-round competition. They fielded bassist Ziya Smallens, guitarists Eric Sherman and Matthew Yaspan and pianist Ianni Drivas; Scott was moved to the drums. The group won first place in the first two rounds before being eliminated in the third. After these memorable performances, it was inevitable that the band would continue.
Since then, The Band Eclypse has made a few roster changes, including the replacement of Ianni Drivas with Andy Sherman, brother of guitarist Eric Sherman, as well as the addition of Jamie Ballan as lead singer. They are competing in The Break Contest to play for the chance to be in Bamboozle, a high-profile music festival in the Meadowlands, and have multiple performances in nightclubs scheduled in the future.
While they are serious musicians, they are all students under the age of 18. “It’s hard to be a musician especially when school remains a priority. We all want to do it full time and we do our best, but school takes up a lot of time,” says Lonner, who is also taking music classes at New York University. “We try to practice twice a week to work on our sound, and it’s enough for now, but hopefully we will be able to add more time for the band to our schedules. It’s especially difficult with Eric, who is currently attending Boston University.”
The Band Eclypse is unique in multiple ways. It consists of members from all different musical backgrounds including jazz, blues, rock, metal, hip-hop and pop. “Our goal is to be something truly different. We’re in a pretty limited genre as we are ‘rap/rock,’ but we make sure that our music crosses all types of musical borders. It’s especially helpful to be blessed with a singer like Jamie; she makes it easier to cross these musical borders,” says Jacobson.
“We want to make ourselves known. We want to show the world just how talented we are and to share our music and our message with them. It’s our desire that people know our names and that we will be forever remembered as something great that changed the way people thought about music,” emcee Jeremy Jordan-Jones explains.
Check out their tunes at www.myspace.com/thebandeclypse
(The Band Eclypse is currently in the studio recording their album, new material up soon!)
The Sound of Music at the Greenacres School
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On Saturday January 30th and Sunday January 31st the Greenacres players, in conjunction with Kevin J. Kearins and KJK Productions, Inc., and the Greenacres PTA, performed the Sound of Music. In all, over 180 children grades 1-5 sang and dance there way into the hearts of their parents, grandparents and friends who came to watch. Everyone was a star.The major parts were all divided giving the maximum number of children the opportunity to be center stage in all there were 17 different Marias. Thanks to Greenacres' Moms; Robin Dillon, Erin Foster and Lauren Haller.
Dreamscapes: An Exhibit of Ard Berge's Work at Iona College
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The exhibition DREAMSCAPES: New Works by Ard Berge is featured at the Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery in the Iona College Arts Center opening on January 24th. The exhibition includes a series of twenty-six paintings and eight drawings through which Ard Berge imaginatively explores the American experience from global and historical perspectives.
Berge, a skilled portraitist, playfully and sardonically populates his canvases with a great American bison, an African peddler on the moon, a fairground on a desolate landscape, an Apache hero engulfed in the stars and stripes, and the White House on a camouflaged lawn. His pictorial realism is not literal but rather represents the whimsical visual reflections of one American’s responses to the world’s paradoxes. Some of these take the form of unexpected and ironical juxtapositions of subjects within the frame of a single canvas while others unfold in diptychs and triptychs. A striking quality of this body of work is the incongruity between the breadth of its subject matter and the exacting precision with which paint is applied to canvas to render these fantastical leaps of the mind in minute detail.
Ard Berge’s last show was at Art First Contemporary Art gallery in London. He has taught studio art and art history for the past ten years at Felician College in New Jersey.
The artist will hold a gallery tour on January 28th at noon. The show will close with a reception on February 25th from noon to 3:00 pm.
Gallery Hours:
Monday-Thursday: noon-5:00 pm
Thursday Evening: 6:30 – 8:00 pm
Sunday: 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Location:
Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery
Iona College Arts Center
665 North Avenue
New Rochelle, NY 10801
(914) 637-7796
www.iona.edu/artscouncil
Gallery Director: Madalyn Barbero Jordan
