By Michael Regenstreif
Ben Caplan
Old Stock
Rhyme & Reason
Records
One of the most
magnificent productions I’ve seen in recent years was “Old Stock: A Refugee
Love Story,” a play co-created by playwright Hannah Moscovitch, who grew up in
Ottawa, singer-songwriter Ben Caplan and director Christian Barry, which tells
the story of Moscovitch’s great-grandparents who fled antisemitism in Romania
in 1908 for Canada.
Caplan plays The
Wanderer, the play’s narrator who moves the story forward with a series of
monologues and songs – most of them klezmer influenced – that he performs with
a theatricality that is equal parts Tevye and Tom Waits. The Old Stock
CD collects the songs that Caplan performs in the show along with a couple of
his monologues, and while it helps to be familiar with the play, these pieces
stand on their own and include songs that relate both explicitly and implicitly
to the plays narrative. Some of the latter serve as modern day Talmudic
interpretations as imagined through lenses of the period (early 20th century)
or of today.
As well as
original material written or co-written by Caplan, Moscovitch and Barry for the
play, Old Stock includes two well-chosen songs written by Geoff Berner,
an instrumental by Danny Rubenstein and a passage from Jeremiah set to
music by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
Warning: Some of
the songs on Old Stock have mature themes and are not suitable for young
children or those offended by profane language and/or frank references to
sexuality.
“Old Stock: A
Refugee Love Story,” starring Ben Caplan, returns to the Babs Asper Theatre at
the National Arts Centre from October 17-27. Visit
https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/21514 for more information.
Shelley Posen
Ontario Moon
Well Done Music
Shelley Posen is well known throughout the folk music world as a member
of Finest Kind, a mostly-retired Ottawa vocal trio known for its glorious
harmonies, and as a versatile singer and songwriter whose work touches many
genres. Ontario Moon is his fifth solo album and while two of his
previous CDs were on specifically Jewish themes, the dozen songs here are
purely secular in nature.
One of the things that’s really nice about this album is that each track
is uniquely arranged with musicians specifically recruited for the song in
question. For example, the title track, a jazzy, romantic tune that recalls the
Tin Pan Alley songs that songwriters like Irving Berlin were writing in the
1930s, features a swinging quintet that includes Django Reinhardt-influenced
guitarists Christian Flores and Andrew Tesolin, bassist Mike Mopasi,
clarinetist Martin van de Ven of the klezmer band Beyond the Pale, and
violinist Mika Posen, the artist’s daughter.
One of the songs I
relate to most on the album is “Night Nurse,” a blues featuring the bottleneck
guitar virtuosity of Michael Jerome Browne. The song is a tribute to the care
Posen received several years ago when he underwent surgery at the University of
Ottawa Heart Institute. The song mirrors my own experiences with the night
nurses when I had my own surgery at the Heart Institute a few years after
Posen.
Other favourites include “The Best Song Ever Written,” a fun country
song about songwriting; “Back at Bub’s,” a rock ‘n’ roller about a favourite
barbecue joint; “Sugar Bush Breakfast,” a very sweet duet with Montreal singer
Linda Morrison; “Tea Time,” a clever paean to afternoon tea at the Royal York
featuring a classical string quartet; and “Walking in the Rain,” a delightful
little piece that sounds like it could have come from a 1940s musical.
While I’ve
mentioned about half the songs on the album, all of the others are just as
good.
No comments:
Post a Comment