Under the Radar

Singing on social issues

Mike Kobluk (the Chad Mitchell Trio) is one of the musicians featured in Under the Radar, by David Eisenstadt. (photo from Trail Times)

Under the Radar: 30 Notable Canadian Jewish Musicians, which I wrote with Alan L. Simons (editor), takes an historical approach, covering musicians of most genres and genders, some alive and others having passed on, all skilled, but excelling somewhat out of sight. This is the third in a three-part series of excerpts from the book, which was released last November, and is available in paperback and as an ebook from amazon.ca. The excerpts feature performers with B.C. roots: Robert Silverman, Ben Mink and Mike Kobluk.

In 1958, as students attending Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., William Chadbourne Mitchell, Mike Kobluk and Mike Pugh formed the Chad Mitchell Trio. Their repertoire criticized the Cold War and the Vietnam War while championing civil rights. Many of John Denver’s early songs were part of their songlist.

Kobluk, who is Jewish, was born in Trail, B.C. As a child, he sang for fun, but “singing for a career … never entered [his] mind.” He majored in English and math at Gonzaga. He spent 10 years – the longest-serving vocalist with the trio – before leaving in 1969.

But, going back. In the summer of 1959, a friend of Mitchell’s “hatched the plan that started us on a professional career” and the trio journeyed to New York to begin that chapter in their lives, according to Kobluk.

By May 1960, they signed with Harry Belafonte’s management company and performed with Belafonte, Pat Boone and Arthur Godfrey.

After two albums were pressed – The Chad Mitchell Trio and In Concert – Everybody’s Listening – Pugh left the group in the fall of 1960 to return to university. Mitchell and Kobluk auditioned more than 150 vocalists, including Tom Paxton. They chose Joe Frazier and, according to The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, the group cut nine albums together.

Initially, the trio recorded on the Colpix label. Their sound soared recording for Kapp Records, with tunes like “Lizzie Borden” (about the accused axe murderer), “Mighty Day” (remembering the Galveston, Tex., hurricane of 1900) and the Prohibition-era tune “Rum by Gum.” Other songs included “The Ides of Texas” (about financier Billie Sol Estes) and “The John Birch Society.” On their live album, they sang “Moscow Nights” in Russian, a controversial decision at the time.

Interviewed by the Trail Times, Kobluk said that, “in the early 1960s, we worked with Belafonte, culminating in a Carnegie Hall concert he hosted featuring Miriam Makeba, Odetta, the Belafonte Singers and us.” As part of a U.S. cultural exchange program, the trio also toured South America in 1962.

“Over time,” he added, “we’d renew our association with Belafonte and, years later, when the Selma, Ala., march with Dr. Martin Luther King was being organized, our reputation put us on Belafonte’s list.”

They left Belafonte Enterprises in 1962 for Mercury Records, adding provocative songs like “The Draft Dodger Rag” and “Barry’s Boys,” the latter of which lampooned Barry Goldwater’s Republican 1964 presidential run.

Mitchell quit the band in 1965, replaced by John Denver, then a relatively unknown singer/songwriter. The musicians retained the well-known Mitchell Trio name with Denver, “who stayed for three years, writing many of the group’s songs,” notes The Virgin Encyclopedia. In 1966, Frazier was replaced by David Boise. In 1969, when Kobluk departed, Michael Johnson joined. Because of contract legalities, the Mitchell name could no longer be used and the group became known as Denver, Boise and Johnson. But it was shortlived – they disbanded in 1969.

Kobluk told the Trail Times, “[We] performed songs of political and social commentary, not exclusively, but such material was an important part of any program. Equal opportunity and voting rights for all were high on our personal and professional priority list and fodder for such commentary.”

Kobluk, Frazier and Boise moved to careers outside the music business, Mitchell cut various solo albums and Denver’s career as a solo performer soared. Johnson recorded more than 15 solo albums and Frazier became an Episcopal Church priest.

On Nov. 15, 2014, in Bethesda, Md., the trio shared a final stage at a “farewell” concert, with singer/guitarist Ron Greenstein replacing Frazier, who died in March of that year.

Ben Mink’s impressive CV

Ben Mink is one of the musicians featured in Under the Radar, by David Eisenstadt. (photo from sonicperspectives.com)

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photo - David Eisenstadt — David Eisenstadt (photo from tcgpr)

Under the Radar: 30 Notable Canadian Jewish Musicians, which I wrote with Alan L. Simons (editor), takes an historical approach, covering musicians of most genres and genders, some alive and others having passed on, all skilled, but excelling somewhat out of sight. This is the second in a three-part series of excerpts from the book, which was released last November, and is available in paperback and as an ebook from amazon.ca. The excerpts feature performers with B.C. roots: Robert Silverman, Ben Mink and Mike Kobluk.

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Ben Mink is best recognized as k.d. lang’s longtime collaborator – together they penned the hit tune “Constant Craving,” and more. Mink is also the “Movie Music King,” wrote Glen Schaefer in Victoria’s Times Colonist.

Mink has worked with many talented musicians – including Susan Aglukark, the Barenaked Ladies, Elton John, Feist, Geddy Lee and Rush, Heart, Anne Murray, Roy Orbison and Wynonna Judd. How did this Canadian songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and music producer assemble such an impressive CV?

The son of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, who was raised in Toronto, said, “My formative years were steeped in Jewish music and popular folk-country, blues and rock. My father, raised in a strict Ger Chassidic household, had a wonderful voice and took every opportunity to use it. My mother was less religious, but from a very cultured Warsaw family.”

In January 1969, Mink joined Mary-Lou Horner, the rock/country house band at Toronto’s landmark club, the Rock Pile. “We opened for great bands including Led Zeppelin,” said Mink. He then performed with the Blazing Zulus, Stringband, FM, and Murray McLauchlan’s Silver Tractors.

On Rush’s 1982 album Signals, Mink played electric violin. In 2000, he co-wrote, produced and played violin and guitar on Lee’s My Favourite Headache. He recorded with Rush again on their 2007 album Snakes & Arrows and appeared live with them on their 2015 final R40 tour.

Mink connected with k.d. lang while with the French Canadian band CANO during the World Science Fair in 1985 in Tsukuba, Japan. This led to recording her first major album for Sire Records, Angel with a Lariat. Thus began a nearly 20-year collaboration where he performed, co-wrote and produced several of her albums. He also played violin, guitar and mandolin with her band, the Reclines.

All of Mink’s collaborations with k.d. lang are too numerous to mention here, but he co-wrote eight songs on Ingénue, including “Constant Craving,” and co-produced the record. “Constant Craving” garnered k.d. lang the 1992 Grammy for best female pop vocal performance.

Mink has also played with Willie P. Bennett, Bruce Cockburn, Dan Hill, Mendelson Joe, Sarah McLachlan, Methodman, Prairie Oyster, Raffi, Jane Siberry, Ian and Sylvia Tyson and Valdy.

The “Movie Music King” provided the soundtrack to Fifty Dead Men Walking, winning a Leo for best musical score for a feature-length drama and a 2010 Genie Award nomination for best achievement in music – original score.

Mink has garnered awards for TV soundtracks as well, including a 2007 Gemini for best biography documentary program, Confessions of an Innocent Man, a story about British-Canadian engineer William Sampson.

Reflecting on his Jewish upbringing, Mink said, “That old-world sensibility has informed every project I’ve worked on, including Ingénue, which owes a debt to klezmer and Yiddish cabaret. It’s the paradigm by which I process most everything.”

Mink is one of a few artists who has ever shared songwriting credit with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. He and k.d. lang received co-credit for the Rolling Stones single “Anybody Seen My Baby” in 1997, after Richard’s daughter noted the chorus was similar to “Constant Craving.”

Rounding up the overview of his many collaborations, Mink produced/ performed on the Black Sea Station’s debut record, Transylvania Avenue, and more than one recording with Chava Alberstein, as well as with the Klezmatics, Finjan and others.

While a prolific collaborator, Mink has only released one recording under his name, Foreign Exchange (1980/Passport Records).

Mink taught at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser and Western Washington universities and lectured at New York University.

Since 2018, he has “mentored up-and-coming performers and [done] community service. He serves on the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra board and the VSO School of Music.”

From his Vancouver home, Mink said he is busy “experimenting with ambient electronic soundscapes, writing nautical fiddle tunes and curating my parent’s personal musical archives.”

Classical pianist & educator

Robert Silverman is one of the musicians featured in Under the Radar, by David Eisenstadt. (photo from Robert Silverman)

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Under the Radar: 30 Notable Canadian Jewish Musicians, which I wrote with Alan L. Simons (editor), takes an historical approach, covering musicians of most genres and genders, some alive and others having passed on, all skilled, but excelling somewhat out of sight. This is the first in a three-part series of excerpts from the book, which was released last November, and is available in paperback and as an ebook from amazon.ca. The excerpts feature performers with B.C. roots: Robert Silverman, Ben Mink and Mike Kobluk.

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Robert Herschel Silverman is one of Canada’s premier pianists. He was born in Montreal, Que., on May 25, 1938, to Jewish parents from the Ukraine and Romania. Globe and Mail reporter Marsha Lederman wrote, “when he was just 4, after seeing how he was drawn to classical music programs on the radio, he was signed up (by his parents) for piano lessons. By his second lesson, Silverman could identify notes by ear. He could read sheet music before he could read words. But even as he continued with his lessons through high school and university, he never considered a career in piano.”

At 6, Silverman played his first recital. His debut at 14 was with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. At 23, he planned to become an engineer but decided to be a classical pianist. Lederman reported Silverman saying, “It was really, really late. It’s not the way to do it.”

He earned undergrad arts and music degrees in the 1960s from Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University. He studied with Dorothy Morton (the daughter of Silverman’s childhood piano teacher) at McGill University, and with Cecile Genhart at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N.Y. He also earned a Canada Council grant to enrol at the Vienna Academy of Music.

Silverman won the top piano prize at the Jeunesses Musicales Canada national competition, playing twice at Expo ’67. His Allied Arts piano competition success earned a recital debut in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in 1970. He made his New York Lincoln Centre debut before he turned 40, in 1978, where the New York Timesdescribed him as “a polished and thoroughly finished technician and an extremely articulate [virtuoso].”

Silverman performed with global and Canadian orchestras conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, Neeme Jarvi, Kiril Kondrashin, Zdenek Macal, Seiji Ozawa and Gerard Schwarz.

In his 30s, he was an artist-in-residence at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y.; he also taught at the University of California in Santa Barbara from 1969 to 1970, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 1970-73. He moved to Vancouver to join the University of British Columbia as professor of music (piano) in 1973. He was the director of UBC’s music school 1991-95, retiring as professor emeritus of music in 2003. Celebrating his 30-year tenure, Silverman received an honorary doctorate in 2004.

Working with Adrienne Cohen, the former music program director at Toronto’s Koffler Centre of the Arts, Silverman, in 2002, was the artist-in-residence.

“My relationship was informal with no written contract. I received an honorarium for seasonal concerts. I appreciated the opportunity to maintain a visible presence in Toronto’s music life and to help Adrienne enhance and enlarge classical music’s role. Although I’m not observant from a religious standpoint, I am keenly aware of my Jewish heritage and pleased to be affiliated with Koffler, whose programs were attuned to the Jewish community in its traditional sense,” he said.

“I grew up when many North American Jewish luminaries were visible – Horowitz, Rubinstein, Bernstein, Reiner, Heifetz, Menuhin and the up-and-comers, Fleisher, Graffman and Rabin. My musicality was shaped by their warm manner of phrasing and attention to tonal beauty, qualities I hold dear and continue to strive towards.”

He returned to Montreal in 2008 to initiate the Dorothy Morton Visiting Artist series at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, performing there on its 10th anniversary. He and his wife also endowed a biannual Robert and Ellen Silverman Piano Concerto Competition.

His discography numbers 30-plus CDs and 12 LPs. He received an Order of Canada in 2013.

As a Vancouver-based retiree and a Steinway artist, Silverman devotes himself full-time to recordings and concerts and is heard often on the CBC and Radio-Canada networks.