Swinging with Sisters

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Know any fans of the Barry Sisters' Yiddish swing vocals of the 1930s and '40s? If so, you may want to buy them tickets now for the Sisters of Sheynville performance at the next Chutzpah! festival, even though it's not till February. After all, they were just named Vocal Group of the Year at the 2008 Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Founded by Lenka Lichtenberg and Isabel Fryszberg, the Toronto band debuted just over three years ago. Their sound includes improvisation and original material, and the three-part vocal arrangements are supported by jazz and klezmer instrumentalists Fern Lindzon (piano, vocals), Kinneret Sagee (clarinet), Rachel Melas (double bass) and Lorie Wolf (drums).

Lichtenberg explained the group's origins to the Independent.

"Isabel and I met at Zalmen Mlotek's Yiddish song workshop that I organized in Toronto, I think in 1993. She may not remember that, but I recall what she sang: 'Rabenyu Tam.' In 2001, at a concert of the female group Mikveh, she approached me and asked if I'd be interested to form a band with her, based on the material of the Barry Sisters – doing Yiddish swing. I had never heard of the Barry Sisters, nor Yiddish swing. I was a classically trained folk singer, a Chava Alberstein and an Ofra [Chaza] fan, with a leaning towards Mizrachi, Middle Eastern music, and this was definitely not my interest. So, I said 'no'; also, I was very busy and could not fit a single extra thing into my schedule of family, university and performing.

"One thing about Isabel you get to know," continued Lichtenberg, is that "she is the most determined person you can find, and she had a vision! About a year later, she called and asked if perhaps I had changed my mind, and was I still so busy? I was a bit less busy, and felt bad about brushing her off, especially because I really liked her as a person, so I promised I would at least check out the music.

"I bought two Barry Sisters CDs and could not stand the music, with all the cheesy orchestrations and big sound. However, I was really impressed with their singing. This really gave me an out – I felt that there was no way at all we could sound anywhere near as fantastic as that. But when Isabel called again in 2003, I felt I was ready to try something new ... perhaps I could get used to this music. And, perhaps, we may even be able to sing this material – just differently. After my second CD came out in December 2003, we got together and started working. We spent a year working, some of it with a vocal coach, on the songs that now form the original core of the band's repertoire."

Once the pair had enough material for a full concert, they started their search for a piano player. Lichtenberg said, "I voted for a woman (and, subsequently, kept insisting to stick to an all-female line-up) – joking that this was the only way my Sephardi husband will let me go on the road. Perhaps there was some truth to that! I knew Fern Lindzon, a jazz singer and a pianist ... and she was interested. We spent two months working with her, then we found the horn player, bass player and drummer. After a few short weeks of rehearsal with these new musicians, we debuted at the Free Times Café in Toronto, in April 2005. We seemed to have struck gold. As unpolished and raw as we were, people could not get enough of the music."

While others were impressed, Lichtenberg said she didn't understand it: she still didn't like the music, but she did like being in the band. She gives much credit to Fryszberg: "She was right that the timing was ripe for this kind of music. So, while now our repertoire and sound are clearly evolving, now more accommodating of my musical taste, as well as the other band members', it was Isabel who came up with the Barry Sisters concept, as well as suggestions for some old roots music that she sang with her mom, sometimes adding Yiddish lines into the text of the English songs. In her mind and heart, this band is really for her mom, who, sadly, passed away some five years ago. As I am Czech, raised in Prague, this music never was in my background, nor of any of the other band members' (all Jewish). I only began studying Yiddish as an adult; Isabel is the only native Yiddish speaker in the band, our link to authenticity."

As for the group's quick rise to success, Lichtenberg said, "I do think we have a certain special sound, the result of the particular way our three voices blend, and the way the arrangements are written – and the instrumentalists' particular take on the music. Once we moved past the copying of the Barrys' harmonies, we entered a new territory. Often, there are hidden or less hidden disharmonies, some subtle 'clashing' notes, some of the 'obvious' notes are missing, replaced instead with a bit of strangeness. I love that. I love unpredictability in art.

"The band is not always too happy to endorse this kind of writing," she continued. "At first, there are the raised eyebrows, when they see the time signatures changing a bit too often ... or clumps of sounds instead of nice neat chords. We have even had a near-revolt just recently (I did go a little too far with that particular composition). But I do believe that's one of the important elements that makes us 'us.' We are not a Barry Sisters tribute band – theirs is a very special material with rich and important history, for many sweetly nostalgic, but we need it to be our own."

Lichtenberg said Lindzon's "particular jazz style of playing, with emphasis on improvisation governed by her sophisticated, good taste, is what really separates us from the Barry Sisters genre." She lauded the talent of Sagee, "our fiery, classically trained clarinetist"; Melas, "our solid as a rock double bass player"; and Wolf, "the baby of the band," who has "several music degrees, and [is] just starting out her career as a composer with her first CD (Taibele and her Demon)." Lindzon also has a CD, Moments Like These, and Lichtenberg has three, Deep Inside, Open the Gate and Pashtes (with Brian Katz). The Sisters of Sheynville released their critically acclaimed debut CD, Sheynville Express, in 2007.

Lichtenberg described Fryszberg as "the ideas person. She comes and gives me a CD of songs she thinks would work for us. She thinks about all this, the style, the genre ... I just pick then what I like best and spend the next three weeks writing the arrangement. Being a trained visual artist, she is also the graphics person, designing our merchandise and posters and all visuals. She also wrote one of the songs we recorded, and wrote several new lyrics in Yiddish to some of our arrangements; musically, she is a roots musician and, of course, she is one of us three singers, singing usually the middle or the lower parts." Lichtenberg said she generally covers the higher vocal parts, while Lindzon "sings the low or middle part, even though she has a lovely high voice."

Lichtenberg said that both she and Fryszberg do publicity and find the band work. Lichtenberg is "also the administrator (at the tune of roughly five hours a day at the computer) and the accountant, what fun!" She credited Lindzon for, in many ways, running the instrumental aspect of the group's live performances.

"We try to rehearse once a week, on Monday evenings," said Lichtenberg. "It does not always work out, with six people's schedules. I think we really enjoy our rehearsals. Everybody has input when we rehearse. Our core, Barrys' repertoire, was arranged entirely in rehearsals, with everybody's pitching in."

Lichtenberg's schedule – regular solo work, as well as singing with Katz and performing with Sisters, along with writing new material – is very full.

"I do have three kids, but I also do have more time now than I have had in many years. I quit my teaching job at Ryerson University in 2005. My kids are 14, 16 and 18 years old. The eldest, Hannah, is on a Young Judea one-year course in Israel this year.... I try to be there for my kids of course, and do whatever is needed ... but the reality is that they don't need me as much as they used to. So, in a way, it works out well, as I am getting more and more busy, and travel so much more than ever before."

Lichtenberg said she has performed in nine different countries in the last four years and has travelled to Europe four times this year alone.

"The one I worry most about not getting enough of me is my husband of nearly 20 years, Rubin," she said. "He is really trying to be supportive and understanding these days, but I do worry that I am stretching his good will at times. He travels with me sometimes – and that's really wonderful."

Lichtenberg is also studying to be a cantor and she described herself as a "cantorial soloist." She belongs to Darchei Noam Congregation, where she said she is often involved in musical Shabbats, singing and playing the guitar, usually along with two or three other musicians. At times, she leads the Torah service and she is very involved in the High Holiday services, especially on Yom Kippur. "I wish I could attend and sing at every Shabbat service, as it fills me with light and total happiness," she said. "I now also regularly co-lead Kabbalat Shabbat services in Prague's Spanish Synagogue, whenever I am there, several times a year. For me, that is an unbelievably meaningful experience, to do that in Prague."

Lichtenberg is working on a CD of Jewish liturgy. "There is something about liturgy that makes me sing differently, and people really relate to it, it seems," she said. "My husband sees this beautiful response and thinks I am wasting my time doing any other kind of music."

Nonetheless, Lichtenberg is working on another project with Katz: "a Yiddish CD of arrangements of Mordekhai Gebirtig's songs, whose work has long been a treasure box and inspiration for me. At this point, I've chosen most of the songs, composed one of the arrangements ("Dray Tekhterlekh").... I still would like this to be done mostly in 2009, and released in 2010. Then, a world tour!"

Lichtenberg also said she is toying with the idea of a Czech neo-folk band, that she has chosen a name for it already and has even booked the band for a concert, "even though it is no more than a sparkle in my eye at this point."

And, she said that she still makes time to "dabble into academia, having presented a paper at a conference on music during the Holocaust, in London, last April. It was about my mom's involvement with music in Terezin, where she spent two years as a child. In fact, this is another project currently on a back burner, but one I know I must do one day: a program built on mom's stories, incorporating Terezin and the Czech music of the time."

Lichtenberg, who lived in Vancouver for seven years, said she loves the city and British Columbia. "It is a dream come true, in many ways, to be booked for the Chutzpah! festival with our Sisters of Sheynville. Chutzpah is an important, major North American festival and it is a great honor and pleasure for us to be part of it.... Through Chutzpah!, I will also be offering a Yiddish song workshop, and I hope many people will want to participate in this opportunity to learn something new – and have some fun with me!"

Lichtenberg promised that anyone who attends the Sisters of Sheynville concert will "be dancing home, smiling all the way!"

For Chutzpah! tickets or information, call 604-257-5145 or visit www.chutzpahfestival.com or www.ticketstonight.com.

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