THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 26, 1994 TAG: 9409260204
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Music Review
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
The audience that turned out for Don Byron's nearly sold-out concert at the Virginia Beach Pavilion on Saturday night was as appreciative as the clarinetist and his band could have hoped - and as they deserved.
Byron, who kicked off Tidewater Performing Arts Society's new season, appeared as part of a nine-piece group that included most of the musicians who were at the core of his 1993 album-length tribute to the music of klezmer great Mickey Katz. Cross-pollination was the key to Katz' music, which made up the bulk of the two sets. The dreadlocked Byron and the rest of the multicultural outfit lived up to that ideal, allowing Katz' work to act as a celebration both of Jewish life and of life itself.
The crowd alternated between hand-clapping to the band's masterful revivals of Katz' rhythms and knowing chuckles at the Katz' pop-song parodies, which put American English and Yiddish into a blender set on puree. Singer Avi Hoffman belted out everything from a rewritten ``St. Louis Blues'' to a ``Sixteen Tons'' that went beyond deconstruction into demolition of everything from Tennessee Ernie Ford to Jewish-American stereotypes. (``I wanted my bottle, I felt real chipper,'' Hoffman sang of a day in the life of a baby. ``I didn't get nothin', 'cause it was Yom Kippur.'')
Even while laying out on the instrumental numbers that made up about half of the selections, Hoffman often served as the silent heart of the band, nodding soulfully, eyes closed, at the beauty and richness of its sound. The members of the crew were obviously at home with one another, and their rowdy interaction both underscored the human aspects of the music and allowed for each player's virtuosity to manifest itself. Among the solo highlights were trombonist Josh Roseman's statements on ``Trombone Tanz,'' the soaring end trumpeter Tony Barrero lent to ``Mendel's Song,'' and violinist Mark Feldman's feature, ``Berele's Sherele.''
Byron himself continually played just about all the clarinet one man could, and reprised his rap on the album's ``Mechaye War Chant,'' one of the comic and musical peaks of the show. The bandleader has been heard to call klezmer ``Jewish hip-hop,'' and the comparison is an apt one. In its appropriation of so many styles and its assertion of one culture's importance, Katz' music allowed Byron and friends to invite everyone in to join the party. by CNB