Alicia Svigals
This Brazilian cultural matrix positions Alicia Svigals globally...
Curation
CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Alicia Svigals
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
Alicia Svigals, violinist/composer and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, is the world's foremost klezmer fiddler. Alicia almost singlehandedly revived the tradition of klezmer fiddling, which had been on the brink of extinction until she recorded her debut album Fidl in the 1990’s. In February 2018, Svigals and jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer released her newest album, Beregovski Suite, a fantasy on klezmer melodies culled from the archive of early 20th century Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovski.
Svigals is also a composer who works in many genres. She was an NEA MacDowell Fellow in 2014, an honor for first-time fellows of “extraordinary talent.” She is the recipient of the Foundation for Jewish Culture's 2013 New Jewish Culture Network commission for her new live score to the 1918 Pola Negri silent film The Yellow Ticket, which she tours internationally with pianist Marilyn Lerner, and was commissioned to create an expanded version of the score for the Seattle Symphony’s clarinetist Laura DeLuca, premiering in May 2014. She was fellow at LABA: a Laboratory of New Jewish Culture in 2014, where she studied Jewish texts with a multidisciplinary group of fellows and wrote a song cycle for soprano, violin and accordion drawn from that experience. In June 2018, Flicker Alley released her score to the 1923 silent film Das Alte Gesetz, co-written with pianist Donald Sosin, which they are touring internationally.
Svigals has taught and toured with violinist Itzhak Perlman, who recorded her compositions as duets with Ms. Svigals and the Klezmatics; and she was awarded first prize in performance at the Safed, Israel international klezmer festival. She’s been featured in Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues (at Madison Square Garden with Phoebe Snow, Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, and Brooke Shields). She’s composed for the Kronos Quartet, and composer Osvaldo Golijov was commissioned to create a work for her and clarinetist David Krakauer (then a fellow band member in the Klezmatics) entitled Rocketekiya, recorded on the Milken Archives label and performed at Merkin Concert Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
In Svigals' band the Klezmatics, she created contemporary Jewish music that combined the joyous and mystical Yiddish tradition with a postmodern aesthetic and an overtly political worldview. She co-led and toured with the band for seventeen years and recorded albums which reached the top ten of the Billboard and European World Music Charts. They appeared on Prairie Home Companion, Rosie O'Donnell's Kids are Punny, Good Morning America, MTV News, Nickelodeon, the BBC, and NPR's Weekend Edition, and with them she composed music for theater, dance and film, including the score to Tony Kushner's A Dybbuk, first produced at the Public Theater in NY, and his work-in-progress It's an Undoing World, groundbreaking documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand's A Healthy Baby Girl, and for poets Allen Ginsburg (in performance at the first Berlin Jewish Culture Festival) and Israeli singer Chava Alberstein (on her collaboration CD with the Klezmatics, The Well). Alicia’s multi-media event The Third Seder, featuring Tony Kushner and the Klezmatics, was presented by La Mama and by the Jewish Museum in New York, and became the model for Michael Dorf’s Third Seder events. Alicia and the Klezmatics recorded two albums for EMI with violinist Itzhak Perlman, which became the best-selling folk albums of all time. They performed with him on PBS' Emmy-winning In the Fiddler's House and on David Letterman, and appeared with him in concert at Radio City Music Hall, Tanglewood, and Wolf Trap.
Ms. Svigals plays and writes music from heavy metal to traditional Greek, and she's recorded on projects from Lipa Schmeltzer‘s Kol Nidre to the soundtrack for the TV series the L-Word. She wrote and recorded string quartet parts for singer/songwriter Diane Birch’s debut Bible Belt, and appeared playing Indian-style violin on Gary Lucas and Najma Akhtar’s Rishte. She was featured on Herb Alpert’s recording of Belz, arranged by Marvin Hamlisch, on A Jewish Songbook. She’s appeared in stadium shows with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, recorded for John Cale's (Velvet Underground) album Last Day On Earth, and the Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen, and improvised with Marc Ribot and John Zorn, appearing on the Knitting Factory Cobra CD. She composed an Americana soundtrack to Judith Helfand's documentary The Uprising of 1934 with singer Peggy Seeger, arranged string quartets for singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman at Carnegie Hall (released as a live CD), provided original music for choreographers Risa Jaroslow, at Lincoln Center, Naomi Goldberg in L.A. at the Ford Theater, and Diane Germaine at the Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati. She has provided original music for author Thane Rosenbaum’s live readings from his novel Golems of Gotham, and for a theater production with acrobat developed from the novel at the 14th St. Y in NY; two characters in the novel are based on Svigals. She’s featured on Avraham Fried's Avinu Malkeynu. Her album Vodkazak, produced by Chabad rabbi Zalman Goldstein, feature her klezmer interpretations of Hasidic Nigunim and is a rare production from that community featuring a female artist.
Svigals has played with performance artist Taylor Mac in the Yiddish song segment of his 24-hour popular song piece, recorded a klezmer “Three Blind Mice” for the permanent children’s room exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History, played Yiddish baseball songs for Peter Miller’s documentary Jews and Baseball: an American Love Story, performed Ethiopian Jewish-African pop with singer/songwriter Alula, led a giant fiddle string orchestra jam with whiskey on a Manhattan rooftop, recorded with Terry Dame’s funky/modal Monkey on a Rail Orchestra, studied Turkish maqams with Ross Daly, taught Klezmer to top young professional artists in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall residency, performed David Krakauer and SoCalled’s Battleship Potemkin score for sampler, orchestral percussion, clarinet and violin at the Wintergarden Theater, was honored at the Bam Café’s performance evening entitled “Tribute to Alicia Svigals”, curated 60 shows in a month at John Zorn’s venue the Stone, worked tirelessly with Yiddish dancemaster Steve Weintraub to revive old-world klezmer dancing in the Jewish community and led concert/dance parties with him at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Public Library et al; led children’s shows introducing the next generation to Yiddish music and dance, and appeared all over the world with her allfemale band with the late Adrienne Cooper, Mikveh, her roots group Alicia Svigals’ Klezmer Fiddle Express and her Klezmer/new improv duos with pianists Marilyn Lerner (Klezmer Unfettered) and Uli Geissendoerfer. (Klezmer Reimagined) – everywhere from the Cite de la Musique in Paris to Carnegie Hall in New York to the Port Townsend Fiddle Festival.
Svigals also writes and lectures on Jewish music and culture.
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
A starting point for this project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a "quilombo" is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu above — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class)...
...theme music for this Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
From inside this Matrix, all creators-creative entities everywhere — empowered by the mathematics of network theory — become potentially discoverable by all people worldwide. Go straight to one of the (randomly selected) creators-creative entities below to see how their Matrix Page — information and media, outgoing and incoming curation — works (reload to feature other artists/creators), or find out below the black line below what unsung (metaphorically only) brilliance this is all about:
More on these profound incubators of Afro-Brazilian culture at:
Os Quilombos da Bahia
The Quilombos of Bahia
There are certain countries, the names of which fire the popular imagination. Brazil is one of them; an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics — there’s no other place like it in the world. And while Rio de Janeiro, or its fame anyway, tends toward the sophisticated end of the spectrum, Bahia bends toward the atavistic…
It’s like a trick of the mind’s light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (and here; the Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet ... in the past it extended into what is now urban Salvador), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.
That's where this Matrix begins:
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers worldwide.
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX