Putting a twist on klezmer

The annual Strings of Autumn festival hosts masterful musicians playing all genres and styles from ancient to modern. But this year the David Orlowsky Trio particularly embodies the diversity of the festival with a unique approach to klezmer music that is innovative yet grounded in tradition.

Klezmer has deep roots in Eastern Europe, using Jewish folk melodies spiced with a Middle Eastern flare by way of the Ottoman Empire. A klezmer renaissance has been afoot in recent years, led by musicians like Orlowsky, a German clarinetist who brings modern instincts to this ancient music.

Orlowsky tells The Prague Post that he set out to be a classical musician, but everything changed for him at his first klezmer concert.

"I'd never even heard the word 'klezmer' back then, and I didn't know anything about the music's tradition. I was just blown away by the sound. There's an ambiguity in the music that I love. There's never really a clear emotion, but it's always somewhere in between: bittersweet, happy and sad at once," he says.

In Yiddish, klezmer is also known as Freilech, or happy music. Orlowsky's attraction to the in-between emotional elements of the style sheds light on his interpretation of klezmer, which investigates the spaces between time signatures, rhythms and moods. This willingness to experiment has won the David Orlowsky Trio jazz and mainstream music fans, and earned them the 2008 ECHO Classical Music Award in the category "Classical Without Boundaries." But Orlowsky is particular in defining his style.

"I don't like that term 'crossover' because it misses the point. Expanding the possibilities of the style was a natural process. Our music is about inspiration and what we're listening to and how that develops our taste and aesthetics," he says.

Critics have often used "crossover" to describe the way Orlowsky brings eclectic tastes to klezmer music in keeping with his own youthful age of 28. Orlowsky so dislikes the term that he has coined a new phrase he finds more fitting.

"We have developed away from the traditional klezmer style to something we call 'chamber world music,' but the emotion and the dance feeling has stayed. We do what we like, and what we like is what we know, whether that's Turkish, Balkan or jazz," he says.

Orlowsky's metamorphic style has much to do with the diversity of his influences, which include "almost no jazz," he maintains.

"I love Michael Jackson. He was a genius composer, and I love the way he mixes flavors and grooves. He combines melodic and rhythmic perfection. Actually, many pop musicians have been influential, such Ian Kramer or Björk," he says. "Everything I hear shapes my aesthetic sense, though perhaps only in an indirect way."

Orlowsky's trio includes Jens-Uwe Popp on guitar and Florian Dohrmann on double bass. The band has released five albums, and unlike many classic klezmer bands, plays primarily original rather than traditional songs. Having three musicians contributing material has been one of the keys to the trio's diversity, Orlowsky says.

"We all write differently because of our backgrounds and instruments. I write melodies and then find chords; the others find harmonies and grooves and go from there," he says. "The songs also tend to change quite a bit as we play them on tour."

The staccato rhythms, complex harmonies and frequent meter changes of klezmer music make it "too complex to improvise freely over," Orlowsky says. Instead, he tends to stick to melodic grooves rather than ranging off the melody in jazz style. Nonetheless, Orlowsky says he has an equal love for improvisation and strictly composed music, and tries to chart a middle way.

As for what Prague audiences can expect from the trio's two performances in the beautiful Spanish Synagogue, Orlowsky says they will be playing compositions from their two latest albums, but concentrating primarily on their most recent album, Nessiah.

"At the beginning, we'll play some traditional pieces - music that is simpler than our stuff, but in a similar style. That will open the door for the audience to experience our music," he says. "We'll start there and take the audience further and further into our world."

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com