The band was the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars; one of the band members is related to someone at Shir Hadash, and so we’re sometimes treated to a concert when they have a gig on the West Coast (they’re in LA tonight). Last night, they played for a bit over an hour to a fairly full room; there was dancing, of course. They play some traditional klezmer as well as some very non-traditional stuff (electric bass just was not very common a hundred years ago); I enjoyed it. Because it was Shabbat, they couldn’t sell their CDs…but they’re available from their website. Another good place to look for klezmer info is Ari Davidow’s Klezmer Shack.
And we may well get another dose of klezmer tomorrow at the “To Life” Festival in Palo Alto.
Today, we went to see San Jose Rep‘s production of
By the Bog of Cats, starring Holly Hunter. I prefer somewhat lighter, happier plays, but I thought this one was very well done. Holly Hunter (as Hester Swane, the protagonist) didn’t overshadow the rest of the principal players — in fact, I thought Jillian Lee Wheeler, who played Hester’s seven-year-old daughter, carried the play along as much as Ms. Hunter did. But at the end of the show, the curtain call was arranged so that Ms. Hunter came out by herself, and that’s when much of the audience decided to give a standing ovation. Star power at work!