Veretski Pass, free concert with Q&A

Zoom Meeting ID: 948 0309 6333. This class is open to the public and no password is needed.

For the past five years, Josh Horowitz has been moderating a concert series created by Brian Wilson as part of Josh’s Sonoma State Jewish Music Genre Studies class. Join us for the first in this year’s series!

In this free concert, the members of Veretski Pass (Cookie Segelstein, Josh Horowitz, Stu Brotman) demonstrate how they use archival material, and spin melodies, some hundreds of years old, into new arrangements and compositions. In the tradition of folk musicians all over the world, these musicians put their own recognizable mark on music from the Jewish Pale of Settlement and beyond. In a true collage of Carpathian, Jewish, Rumanian and Ottoman styles, typical suites contain dances from Moldavia and Bessarabia; Jewish melodies from Poland and Romania; Hutzul wedding music from Carpathian-Ruthenia; and haunting Rembetic airs.

The performance will be followed by a Q&A. Students enrolled in the class will be given preference in asking questions.

Taking its name from the mountain pass through which Magyar tribes crossed into the Carpathian basin to settle what later became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Veretski Pass offers a unique and exciting combination of virtuosic musicianship and raw energy that has excited concertgoers across the world. The trio plays Old Country Music with origins in the Ottoman Empire, once fabled as the borderlands of the East and the West. Their CDs have repeatedly been on the ten-best recording lists of journalists since 2002.