
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, September 20, 1994                   TAG: 9409230018
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By CHRIS HENSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BAND'S MUSIC HAS YIDDISH ROOTS

The violin saws and soars, the torchy voice smolders, and the clarinet laughs out loud. A party and a pageant at once, heart-wrenching delirium - this is klezmer. It's a joyous music with an obstinate beat part tango, part oom-pah that you can't lose - it's right there, in your foot.

This Yiddish theater music of the '20s and '30s with its mournful cries and careening melodies is enjoying a comeback, thanks in part to the voice of Judy Bressler and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. They will bring their traditional sounds to Olin Hall at Roanoke College tonight at 8. Hankus Netsky directs the 12-piece orchestra, which includes a banjo, accordion, strings, winds and percussion, as they attempt to turn the hall into a giant Jewish wedding. The band promises to invigorate the crowd with a hand-clapping, toe-tapping, dance-in-the-aisles festival of global significance.

The Klezmer Conservatory Band has toured the United States, Europe and Australia. They have recorded seven albums and have been heard on ``A Prairie Home Companion.'' The band has performed with cellist Yo Yo Ma and filmed a children's video for Rabbit Ear Productions with Robin Williams titled ``The Fool and the Flying Ship.''

Netsky, now a professor of jazz at the New England Conservatory of Music, discovered his Klezmer roots when he was 19. Growing up, he had seen the sheet music in his family's attic but had no idea how it sounded. When he finally heard some old 78s recorded by his grandfather, Kol Katz (and his Kittens), a klezmer musician in Philadelphia in the '20s, he was hooked. Netsky began to work up some arrangements with friends at the conservatory. An impromptu concert of three songs at a world music festival in 1980 was so wildly received that the band has been going strong ever since.

Klezmer, from the biblical Klei-zemer, means ``vessel of song.'' Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe brought their folk music to America at the turn of the century and, by mixing it with the jazz they found here, created a vivid and contagious celebration of their heritage. Played in the Yiddish theaters and jazz clubs, klezmer music crossed easily into the popular styles of the day with songs like the Andrews Sisters' ``Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.''

Along with swing, the music fell out of favor after World War II. ``Fiddler on the Roof,'' however, revitalized the traditional sounds along with the Jewish experience. In the '50s Mickey Katz used klezmer and his songs sung in ``Yinglish,'' or English and Yiddish combined, to create several pop hits in a comic style rivalling Spike Jones.

With the advent of world music klezmer has come into its own. Indeed, in 1990 the KCB traveled to Krakow, Poland, to perform at the first-ever International Yiddish Festival.

The Klezmer Conservatory Band: Tonight at 8 at Olin Hall, Roanoke College, Salem. Tickets, $14, $12 at the door. 375-2333.

by CNB