A List
4/1/02

KLEZMER BAND HOT PSTROMI TO PERFORM AT SLU

CANTON - The six-piece klezmer band Hot Pstromi, under the 
leadership of Yale Strom, will perform in concert at St. Lawrence 
University on Thursday, April 11, at 8 p.m. in Gulick Theatre. 
Free tickets for the concert are available at the Brewer Bookstore 
and the E.J. Noble University Center on campus.
	Strom is an arranger, composer, folklorist, musician and 
producer of both considerable talent and all-around musical vision. 
For 20 years, Strom has been dishing out the fruits of his field 
research in Eastern Europe and his own imagination in original 
compositions, Yiddish and Sephardic folk melodies. These have been 
combined in various forms and jazzy arrangements that have the 
feel of Jewish cabaret. Hot Pstromi's vocalist, Elizabeth Schwartz, 
channels her wide-ranging background in musical theater, blues, 
rock and jazz into a vivid, contemporary Yiddish idiom that needs 
no translation.
	A pioneer among those klezmer revivalists conducting 
extensive field research among the Jewish and Rom communities in 
Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Strom's initial work 
focused on the use and performance of klezmer music in these two 
groups. However, he gradually broadened his focus to examine all 
aspects of their culture from post-World War II to the present. 
Since Strom's first band began in 1981, he composed his own New 
Jewish music, combining klezmer with Hasidic nigunim, Rom, jazz, 
classical, Balkan and Sephardic motifs. His compositions range 
from quartets to a symphony that premiered with the St. Louis 
Symphony Orchestra. Strom's research has also resulted in six 
photo documentary books, eight klezmer CD recordings, and three 
documentary films. He was the first documentary filmmaker in 
history to be given his own run at Lincoln Center's prestigious 
Walter Reade Theatre, where his The Last Klezmer broke all box 
office records. That record was exceeded only by his other film, 
Carpati. Strom recently directed his first feature film, On The QT, 
starring James Earl Jones, Trudie Styler, Sam Ball and Annie 
Parisse (Mainline Releasing, 2002), and he is currently in 
post-production on two new documentary films, L'Chaiyim, Comrade 
Stalin and Klezmer on Fish Street. He is the author of The Book of 
Klezmer: The History, The Music, The Folklore (a capella Books, 
August, 2002) and a play, The Rebbe's Gypsy Song.  His eighth CD, 
Garden of Yidn, was released in January 2001 on the Naxos World 
label.
	The concert is sponsored by the Seymour Siegel Endowment. Rabbi 
Siegel was a noted Conservative Jewish author and scholar. His family 
donated his papers to St. Lawrence University's Owen D. Young Library 
and created an endowment for an annual event on campus in his memory.

-30-

Back To News Releases
Back to St. Lawrence Homepage