Kugelplex

We’ve been hard at work on our collaboration with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. Here’s the first sneak-preview of a practice track we recorded to help the Choir learn their parts. This is a traditional Hungarian folk tune, arranged by Dan Cantrell and sung here by Dan and Barbara Byers. We can’t wait for everyone to hear it with the full chorus.

Speaking of Joan Baez, when we were getting ready for our concert last December, she came over to my apartment in SF for a practice. We were all shy and trying to be uber-pro so no one took any pictures except for this one lousy cell phone shot I surreptitiously snapped. In this shot, Faisal Zaidan (master hand percussionist) is teaching Joan the Arabic lyrics to Jari Ya Hammouda…

Eugene..............Faisal.................Joan

Esperanza Spalding

The East Bay Express featured a cute pic (yes, that’s a cupcake in Dan’s hand) of Kugelplex in their “The East Bay is a hotbed for jazz and classical music” fall preview article. Regardless that the article was a bit factually challenged (we are not playing with Joan Baez again, and as far as we know, we are not part of the SFJAZZ season), we’re still extremely appreciative they used our picture, especially considering Phillip Glass and Esperanza Spalding are in the same article. I guess winning Grammies and being all famous and stuff doesn’t guarantee you’ll get your picture in the paper. But just in case there’s any hard feelings, Esperanza, if you’re reading this, I hope you can console yourself with being kugelblogged…

Last year, we had one of those rare confluences where someone called us to play a wedding and it just happened to be on the way home from another wedding. And perfect timing too. So, after rocking out in wine country all day, we hightailed it to Marin and stormed into a barn, instruments-a-blazin’, where a bunch of folks were waiting… here’s a photographic barrage of the madness that ensued.

Photographer Theo Rigby let the shutter fly and then put together this flipbook. Since these are still shots, there’s no sound. So, we set it to one of the tunes we might have been playing, which also happens to be a preview clip from our about-to-be-released record…

(for some reason youtube won’t post the right video… weird…  go to youtube.com/kugelplex52 if you want to see the flipbook).

We played with Joan Baez last weekend. She joined us onstage at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland for a couple of songs. Jari Ya Hammouda is an Arabic song from Morocco. Also joining us was percussionist, Faisal Zaidan. This is the first time Kugelplex has ever played with Dan’s Arabic-tuned accordion. Check out our quarter tones!

This is the first post of the Kugelblog — or the klezlog — or some such conjunction. Regardless, it’ll be a forum for all things Kugelplex, a venue for the musicians of Kugelplex to share our experiences and philosophical musings as klezmers living in the modern world. This will also be a place for people who want to book us to get a sense of what sort of band we are and what we do. By the way — this is a picture of the band playing in a cave.