Month: November 2022

Jewish Americana band Nefesh Mountain will light up the Shalin Liu stage for Hanukkah

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Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg (with mandolin) and their band, Nefesh Mountain. NEFESHMOUNTAIN.COM

By Shelley A. Sackett

Doni Zasloff has always felt like a “spiritual cowgirl.”

The songs she and her husband, Eric Lindberg, write and sing for Nefesh Mountain – the band they co-founded – draw from Jewish history, tradition, and religion, but they work in a musical idiom that wouldn’t seem at all Jewish – bluegrass.

It all started in 2010, when Zasloff met guitarist and banjo player Lindberg. Raised in Brooklyn, he attended Hebrew school and synagogue. He also spent summers with his father’s relatives in North Georgia, playing music with his uncles and learning their southern traditional styles, like Appalachian, bluegrass, and blues.

Jewish music was a big part of Zasloff’s traditional Jewish childhood in Philadelphia, where she attended synagogue, Jewish schools and camps. She joined all the theater productions from her Jewish youth groups and learned to chant from the Torah and lead services at a very young age.

In 2010, the two started playing music together and Lindberg opened Zasloff’s eyes and ears to the beauty and depth of old time Americana music. They see their music as the perfect expression of their love and identity as American Jews.

“For us, these are all fragments of who we are as Jewish Americans,” Zasloff said by phone from her Montclair, N.J., home during a break from the band’s busy tour schedule. “It’s our story of wanting to be authentic and honest while putting love out into the world.”

Since 2016, Nefesh Mountain has released four albums: “Nefesh Mountain” (2016); “Beneath The Open Sky” (2018); “Songs for the Sparrows” (2021), and “Live From Levon Helm Studios: A Hanukkah Holiday Concert” (2021).

On Nov. 29, they will illuminate the Shalin Liu Performance Center stage in Gloucester with the kickoff concert for their 2022 Hanukkah Tour.

The tour grew out of the couple’s desire to stay on top of their careers as musicians during the pandemic lockdown of late 2020. They wanted to live-stream an event into people’s homes, and Hanukkah seemed like a good time to do it.

“Hanukkah is a celebration, and we wanted to bring some light into a very dark year and dark time for everybody,” Lindberg explained by phone.

The band got together at the Levon Helm Studio in Woodstock, N.Y. After their live presentation, they had all the audio recordings. “We thought, ‘Let’s just get it out there,’ ” Lindberg said, and they imprinted a CD and started streaming it on Spotify and other social and music media. In 2021, they took the album on the road with their first Hanukkah Holiday Concert Tour, which also opened at the Rockport venue.

“Touring is harder now than even before the pandemic, but it’s the only way to make a sound living as a musician,” Lindberg said, referring to the financial impact of streaming on artists. The model, he says, hasn’t changed in 100 years. “You come up with an album, go out on the road and meet people, and it becomes part of your career.”

Their repertoire (and the album) includes “Donna, Donna” and several by American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie – who penned the music to a “baker’s dozen” of Hanukkah songs. “We’re kind of an Americana folk band, and it’s fun to bring this music to life within the context of what we do,” Lindberg said.

Lindberg specifically recalls recalled one Hanukkah from his youth when his parents played Harry Belafonte’s 1959 Caribbean version of “Henei Ma Tov” right after they lit the Hanukkah candles. He remembers listening to this song, watching the candles and feeling “this otherworldly thing. Wherever music transports us to is a place I feel lucky to go,” he said. “Donna, Donna,” based on an Eastern European Yiddish folk tale, has that same spirit that, to Lindberg, “fits the vibe of Hanukkah.”

Their 2012 album, “Songs for the Sparrow,” also evolved out of the couple’s shared experiences and Jewish heritage. American Songwriter described it as “arguably some of the best bluegrass ever made.”
In 2018, Zasloff and Lindberg took a trip to Poland and Ukraine, visiting many of the cities and towns where their ancestors had lived and met violent deaths during the Holocaust.

At the cemetery where Lindberg’s great-grandfather was buried, a huge swarm of sparrows suddenly flew overhead. “There was something in that moment that we thought about until we got home. The song, ‘A Sparrow’s Song’ is for them – the lives that were lost, the voices silenced,” Zasloff said.

A few months after their they returned home, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people. The next morning, Lindberg, still shaken, woke early and started working on a melody. Zasloff joined him, and “Tree of Life,” a somber banjo song that ends with the words, “Oh sweet spirit hear my prayers/help these words heal someone out there,” poured out of them. The song also appears on the album.

“We’re not politicians. As musicians, this is what we do,” Zasloff said.

The Nefesh Mountain website, nefeshmountain.com, calls their music “the place where American bluegrass and old-time music meet with Jewish heritage and tradition.” Zasloff chafes at attempts by others to label their music as Jewish Bluegrass, “Jewgrass” or other mash-ups.

“There’s no kitsch in our music,” she said. “It’s our truth.” Θ

Visit rockportmusic.org/nefesh-mountain.

With ‘The Orchard,’ Arlekin Players Theatre’s Igor Golyak Continues To Push The Artistic Envelope 

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Cast of ‘The Orchard’ at Emerson Paramount Center

by Shelley A. Sackett

Anton Chekhov’s play, ‘The Cherry Orchard,’ opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on January 17, 1904, under the direction of the actor-director Konstantin Stanislavski. During rehearsals, the director rewrote Act Two, changing the play from Chekhov’s intended light and lively comedy into a tragedy. Chekhov is said to have disliked the Stanislavski production so much that he considered his play “ruined.”

One can’t help but wonder what the Russian playwright would make of ‘The Orchard,’ Igor Golyak’s creatively incomparable and technologically unparalleled reimagining of this iconic classic.

The live version (there is also a simultaneous livestream version with many bells and whistles and interactive options) takes place on a surreal, stylized stage anchored by an enormous white robot arm that is strangely animate and huggable, like the Pixar hopping desk lamp on steroids. It also has the less endearing quality of a giant dental X-ray machine or unipedal CT scan.

The stage floor is covered in fluffy piles and the entire area is flooded in a blue light that feels like a cross between a dreamy moonscape and a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Are these mounds of fallen cherry blossoms or radioactive fallout? A Holo-Gauze screen (a highly reflective and transparent projection net which supports 3D polarized projections) separates the audience from the players. Large scale projections connect live and virtual audiences with feedback loops that expand the otherworldly sense of chaos and charade.

This is not a production for literalists, purists or those unable or willing to let go of the notion of control when it comes to live theater viewing. It also helps to have a cursory familiarity with Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’ to keep from getting totally disoriented when Golyak takes us on a chaotic journey down the rabbit hole of his inventive artistry.

There’s so much happening onstage that looking for plot threads is as frustrating as it is fruitless.

In a nutshell, the Chekhov version revolves around Madame Ranevskaya (played by the ethereally luminous Jessica Hecht), an aristocratic Russian land-owner who returns to her family estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. Unresponsive to offers to save the estate, she allows its sale to the son of a former serf named Lopakhin (played by the prodigiously talented Nael Nacer). As they struggle with the destruction of their world as they knew it, Ranevskaya’s family leaves their home to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down.

Chekhov intended his comedic farce to dramatize the socioeconomic forces in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of serfdom in the mid-19th century, and the decline of the power of the aristocracy.

Seeing a new riff on a Russian classic, however, is hardly what packed the house on opening night.

The real reason many attended the performance was, of course, to see the extraordinary Mikhail Baryshnikov in person performing as Firs, the 87-year-old former serf turned manservant. The esteemed actor and ballet genius did not disappoint.

The opening moments of the black-clad Firs twirling dervish-like and being blown about by the wind are worth the price of admission. Baryshnikov pirouettes across the stage with breathtaking grace and ease. For the remainder of the play, he handily steals every scene he is in.

The problem is that watching him is like trying to drive at night through the cloudy lens of a cataract. While the Holo-Gauze screen adds immeasurably to the virtual production, it is an annoying impediment for those watching live, like sitting in a seat marked “obstructed view.”

Nonetheless, ‘The Orchard’ is worth seeing if for no other reason than to follow the contemporary take the extraordinary Golyak has on the ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ His production reimagines both the classic and the ways in which the theater experience itself can be reinvented.

It is also great fun. There is a mechanical dog (Robotics design is by Tom Sepe), the captivatingly whimsical performance of Darya Denisova as Charlotta, and Anna Fedorova’s set enchantingly lit by Yuki Nakase Link. Oana Botez’s costumes are added eye candy.

Having seen both the live and online versions, I must say that rather than being duplicative or fungible, they are actually complementary visions of a single experience. Neither is complete without the other and each sheds light on its counterpart.

In the online version, for example, viewers can choose the camera angles from which they want to see the action and can exit the main stage to various other virtual rooms of the old house in which the play occupies but one part. It’s as if the audience has been put in charge of its own theatrical experience.

The live version has the opposite effect. With all the projected images and splicing in of the zoom gallery shots of the online audience, we are not only aware of the play’s concomitant virtual experience; we are captives in it.

When one of the actors say, “I have this strange feeling that I’ve just landed on the Moon,” the audience nods in agreement.

Golyak, whose family fled the Ukraine’s antisemitism in the 1990s, is a global leader in the virtual theater movement. In a press release, he highlighted the play’s personal and ongoing relevance as an analogy for so many current societal ills.

“This is a story about the delicate relationships at the center of a family facing the end of the world as they know it,” Golyak said. “We are living through an unimaginable time of change and destruction with the war in Ukraine. As humans, we are perpetually losing our cherry orchards, losing our worlds. This play is about us today.”

‘The Orchard’ — Conceived and Directed by Igor Golyak, based on ‘The Cherry Orchard’ by Anton Chekhov. Anna Fedorova, Scenic Designer. Yuki Nakase Link, Lighting Designer. Oana Botez, Costume Designer. Alex Basco Koch, Projection Designer. Tei Blow, Sound Designer. Jakov Jakoulov, Composer. Tom Sepe, Robotics Designer. Presented by Groundswell Theatricals and Arlekin Players and its Zero Gravity Virtual Theater Lab, at Emerson Paramount Center, the Robert J Orchard Stage, 559 Washington St., Boston through November 13.

For tickets and information, go to: https://www.arlekinplayers.com/the-orchard/

SpeakEasy’s ‘English’ Explores The Tipping Point Between Identity and Heritage

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Cast of ‘English’ at Speakeasy Stage. Photos by Nile Scott Studios

by Shelley A. Sackett

SpeakEasy Stage’s production of Sanaz Toossi’s ‘English’ starts out simply enough. Four Iranian students are studying in Karaj for the Test of English as a Foreign Language Exam (TOEFL) , an English proficiency exam they must pass if they hope to pursue university study abroad, immigration and more. Their teacher, Marjan (a first-rate Deniz Khateri), rules her classroom with an iron fist. They will speak only English during class, and when anyone slips into Farsi, she posts a strike against them on her giant blackboard, practically snarling with scorn.

This is language immersion that is the equivalent of throwing a baby into the deep end to teach them to swim. Yet, her motive, at least in the beginning, seems pure and altruistic. She studied in Manchester, England, an experience that changed her life for the better and one she speaks of with near religious veneration. She believes that she and she alone can help her flock find this same path that opened her world, and she takes her role as their shepherd with the seriousness and zeal of a missionary.

[An effective and engaging scripted touch is that when the actors speak their native Farsi, they do so in fluent conversational English. When they practice English, their speech is more staccato, with a heavily accented cadence of a beginning foreign language student.]

Marjan insists her students leave their Iranian identities outside her classroom door. “English Only!” is underlined twice on the blackboard. The implication is clear — Farsi and all things Iranian are baggage that need to be shed if one is to “make it” in the global arena. “Speaking English is one of the greatest things two people can do together,” she coos, and she means it with all her being.

Her students don’t always agree. Roya (the splendid Layla Modirzadeh) needs to learn English so she can join her son and his family (including a granddaughter whose English name Roya can’t pronounce) in Canada, where they have emigrated and assimilated. She is the oldest of the students and the one with the longest and deepest roots in Iran.

When she learns that Marjan happily gave up her identity in England, letting others call her “Mary” for their convenience and ease, she chafes. People should not have to give up their names to learn a language, she says. “Our mothers get to name us. Not foreigners.”

Zaven Ovian, Deniz Khateri, Josephine Moshiri Elwood

Elham (compellingly played by the feisty Josephine Moshiri Elwood) has taken the TOEFL before and failed. More than the others, she needs to pass this test to pursue her goal of studying gastroenterology in Australia. In addition to her thick Farsi accent and lack of facility with languages,  she faces two other barriers: she despises English and how her voice sounds when she speaks it, and she can’t stand Marjan and her autocratic ways. That Marjan deliberately humiliates and picks on her adds fuel to her hot-blooded flame.

Goli (Lily Gilan James, a senior at Boston Conservatory at Berklee) is a compliant and reticent 18-year-old who happily does as she is told. She is the least interesting, with no axe to grind and nothing to prove. She just wants to pass the exam so she can go to a university outside Iran.

On the other hand, 29-year-old Omid (Zaven Ovian) is an enigma. His English is better than the teacher’s, and he comes up with complex and specific vocabulary, like “windbreaker” during a word game. He and Marjan bond inside and outside class over their seeming shared love of all things foreign, but Omid has a secret he keeps tight to his vest until the play’s end. Ovian splendidly plays out the mystery.

Director Melory Mirashrafi, a first generation Iranian-American, makes the most of Janie E. Howland’s well-designed set and a script that at times moves slowly.

Playwright Sanaz Toossi (who won this year’s Lucille Lortel Award for “English”) takes her petri dish of varied and complex characters and, over 100 intermissionless minutes, seamlessly interweaves engaging theater with an existential examination of identity, heritage, assimilation and alienation.

She poses many important and timely questions. Is there is a tipping point at which the loss of cultural identity outweighs the materials of life in one’s non-native land? Is voluntary immigration something to be encouraged or grieved? What about the generations, like Roya’s granddaughter, who will grow up without hearing Farsi or understanding her cultural heritage?

Is it worth leaving your homeland voluntarily, Toossi questions, to forever be branded a foreigner with an accent, the “other” who will always be asked, “where are you from?” [Toossi’s mother immigrated to the U.S. from Iran in the mid-1980’s following the Iranian Revolution].

When Elham returns to the classroom after taking (and passing with 99%) the TOEFL, it is not to gloat or thank Marjan, but to offer by example a lesson of how you can gain English language proficiency without losing your Iranian soul.

“You are Iranian but your English is a lot of things. It wants to be American and some of the time British and now it does not know what it is. When I speak English, I know I will always be a stranger,” Elham tells Marjan. “I hear my home. What do you hear?”

English’ –Sanaz Toossi, Playwright. Melory Mirashrafi, Director. Janie E. Howland, Scenic Designer. Nina Vartanian, Costume Designer. Amanda E. Fallon, Lighting Designer. Ash, Sound Designer. Emme Shaw, Props Designer. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St. Boston, through November 19, 2022.

For tickets and information, go to: https://www.speakeasystage.com/