Joellen & The Urban Gypsies + Schmaltz

JOELLEN AND THE URBAN GYPSIES BRING THE WHIMSICAL AND IMAGINATIVE MOUNTAIN DULCIMER PLAYER/builder and accordionist, JOELLEN LAPIDUS, together with the musical talents of extraordinary jazz violinist Yvette Devereaux and multi genre upright bass player Oliver Steinberg. “We present Americana/Roots/Folk/World music through an URBAN LENS BEING EQUALLY COMFORTABLE PLAYING SQUARE DANCE TUNES FROM APPALACHIA, jazz standards from the 40’s, Indian Ragas, pop tunes and Klezmer. We are musical “URBAN GYPSIES”, wandering the musical world, gathering up lovely, inspiring, funny, raucous tunes that help us all feel and express the complex palette of human experience.”—Lapidus SCHMALTZ: SCHMALTZ LITERALLY MEANS CHICKEN FAT BUT MUSICALLY MEANS AN OVERLY THEATRICAL, campy, and extremely rich performance. Four extraordinary talented musicians, two from Eastern Europe, one from LA and one from New York City have embraced the modes melodies and rhythms of the Eastern European Jewish folk music called Klezmer. Mix in their URBAN EXPOSURE TO CLASSICAL MUSIC, blues, jazz, Indian and Middle Eastern music and you get SCHMALTZ. The interplay between Yvette Devereaux’s electrifying, cascading, haunting violin, and Leo Chelyapov’s soaring, chuckling clarinet is an explosion of dazzling musical technique gushing with delicate, raucous, humorous, deeply emotional, uplifting, ecstatic, transformative musical conversation. Klezmer’s infectious rhythms, sometimes delicate and sometimes fierce, are generated by JOELLEN LAPIDUS’ accordion and Igor Kogan’s upright bass. It’s very rich! “That’s why we call ourselves SCHMALTZ.”—JOELLEN. http://www.lapidusmusic.com [http://www.lapidusmusic.com]