The Reptile Palace Orchestra [1] is an eclectic worldbeat [2] band based in Madison, Wisconsin which specializes in lounge, klezmer and other Eastern European music. It began in 1994 with a gig at the Club de Wash, and since that time has become a notable fixture in the Madison music scene. Membership has varied, but the current line-up consists of Maggie Weiser, Biff Blumfumgagnge, Seth Blair, Kia Karlen, Bill Feeny, Robert Schoville, Greg Smith and Ed Feeny, and included Sigtryggur Baldursson [3] of Sugarcubes/Björk fame on their first 2 Omnium releases, Iguana iguana and HWY X [4]
Worldwide sources include their Greenman Review, [5] their Ink 19 interview by Holly Day, [6] their Dirty Linen appearance, [7] their Inside World Music interview by Paula E. Kirman, [8] a 2003 cover story in Maximum Ink [9] and an appearance in Snapshotmusic's FolkLib Index listing. [10] They also appeared on Balkans Without Borders [11] which benefitted the non-profit Doctors Without Borders organization. [12]
Among the traditional Folk dance material, the group has a song dedicated to the Freshwater Drum. Boiled in Lead members Drew Miller and Robin Adnan Anders have both played with the Reptiles, and Biff has played with Boiled in Lead. The Reptiles also share membership (Kia, Greg and Geoff Brady) with Yid Vicious a notable Madison Klezmer band.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London.
Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.
Balkan music is a type of music found in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. The music is characterised by complex rhythm. Famous bands in Balkan music include Taraf de Haïdouks, Fanfare Ciocărlia, and No Smoking Orchestra.
Henry "Hank" Sapoznik is an American author, record and radio producer and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music.
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is an American orchestra based in the city of Rochester, New York. Its primary concert venue is the Eastman Theatre at the Eastman School of Music.
The Klezmorim, founded in Berkeley, California, in 1975, was the world's first klezmer revival band, widely credited with spearheading the global renaissance of klezmer in the 1970s and 1980s. Initially featuring flute and strings—notably the exotic fiddling of co-founder David Skuse—the ensemble reorganized into a "loose, roaring, funky" brass/reed/percussion band fronted by co-founder Lev Liberman's saxophones and founding member David Julian Gray's clarinets. As a professional performing and recording ensemble focused on recreating the lost sounds of early 20th century klezmer bands, The Klezmorim achieved crossover success, garnering a Grammy nomination in 1982 for their album Metropolis and selling out major concert venues across North America and Europe, including Carnegie Hall and L'Olympia in Paris. The band performed steadily until 1993, regrouping in 2004 for a European tour.
David Krakauer is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation.
Joel Rubin is an American clarinetist, klezmer musician, ethnomusicologist, and scholar of Jewish music. Since becoming involved in the klezmer revival in the late 1970s, he has been researching, teaching and performing klezmer music and related genres. He has been a member of, or performed with, such groups as Brave Old World, the Joel Rubin Ensemble, and Veretski Pass.
The Gomers are a Madison, Wisconsin-based comedy rock, experimental music, and progressive rock band. Former Madison mayors Dave Cieslewicz and Sue Baumann both proclaimed February 1 as "Gomer Day" in Madison. Their name was taken from Gomer Pyle.
Andrew Edward Statman is a noted American klezmer clarinetist and bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist.
Beyond the Pale is a Toronto-based Canadian world/roots fusion band. Their style is rooted in klezmer, Balkan and Romanian music but heavily accented with contemporary and North American styles including bluegrass, jazz, reggae, funk and classical chamber music. They are known for unique songcraft, virtuosic musicianship, meticulous dynamics, and exuberant live performances. They are widely regarded as one of Canada's most accomplished and innovative acoustic ensembles. Some have described their sound as being in the same spirit as "New Acoustic Music" and David Grisman's "Dawg" music, but tinged more heavily with an east European accent. The name of the band is a reference to the Eastern-European Jewish Pale of Settlement, from where their music is partially inspired.
Biff Moyer, who became known under the name Biff Uranus Blumfumgagnge, is an American musician, guitar technician, sound engineer, record producer and instructor of music and recording technology at the Madison Media Institute.
Shloimke Beckerman also known as Samuel Beckerman, was a klezmer clarinetist and bandleader in New York City in the early twentieth century; he was a contemporary of Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein. He was the father of Sid Beckerman, also a klezmer bandleader.
Joi Barua is an Indian singer and music composer. Born in Digboi, Assam, he started his career by singing advertising jingles and later did playback singing for Hindi, Assamese and Telugu films. He is also the lead vocalist of the band Joi. Barua has a mixed musical style incorporating elements of rock, soul, jazz, folk and world music.
East Meets East is a collaborative studio album released through EMI Classics in 2003 by violinist Nigel Kennedy and the Kroke band, surrounded by several guest artists of international reputation such as Natacha Atlas, Mo Foster, and the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra.
"'Ajde Jano" is a traditional Serbian wedding Folk song from Kosovska Mitrovica and Kosovska Kamenica.
Boiled in Lead is a folk-punk/worldbeat band based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and founded in 1983. Tim Walters of MusicHound Folk called the group "the most important folk-rock band to appear since the 1970s." Influential record producer and musician Steve Albini called the band's self-titled first album "the most impressive debut record from a rock band I've heard all year." Their style, sometimes called "rock 'n' reel," is heavily influenced by both traditional folk music and punk rock, and has drawn them praise as one of the few American bands of the 1980s and 1990s to expand on Fairport Convention's rocked-up take on traditional folk. Folk Roots magazine noted that Boiled in Lead's "folk-punk" approach synthesized the idealistic and archival approach of 1960s folk music with the burgeoning American alternative-rock scene of the early 1980s typified by Hüsker Dü and R.E.M. The band also incorporates a plethora of international musical traditions, including Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Scottish, Vietnamese, Hungarian, African, klezmer, and Romani music. Boiled in Lead has been hailed as a pioneering bridge between American rock and international music, and a precursor to Gogol Bordello and other gypsy-punk bands. While most heavily active in the 1980s and 1990s, the group is still performing today, including annual St. Patrick's Day concerts in Minneapolis. Over the course of its career, Boiled in Lead has released nearly a dozen albums and EPs, most recently 2012's The Well Below.
Airat Rafailovich Ichmouratov born 28 June 1973, is a Volga Tatar born Russian / Canadian composer, conductor and klezmer clarinetist. He is a founding member and clarinetist of award-winning Montreal-based klezmer group Kleztory and invited professor at Laval University in Quebec, Canada.
Songs From the Gypsy is the sixth album by Minneapolis folk punk band Boiled in Lead, and its second with lead singer/guitarist Adam Stemple. It is a song cycle based on a Hungarian folk tale, written largely by Stemple and his Cats Laughing bandmate Steven Brust several years prior to Boiled in Lead's recording. Brust, who is best known as a fantasy novelist, collaborated with writer Megan Lindholm on a novel, The Gypsy, based on the songs. Boiled in Lead's album is considered the soundtrack to the novel. Brust had previously co-written two songs on Boiled in Lead's 1994 album Antler Dance, and had released a 1993 solo album, A Rose for Iconoclastes.
Belf's Romanian Orchestra was a Jewish music recording ensemble from the Russian Empire. Although little is known about them, their numerous recordings for Syrena Rekord during the period of 1911 to 1914 are among the earliest documented examples of recorded klezmer music and are played in a style very different from the better-known American klezmer recordings of the 1910s and 1920s.