The Kalpna Restaurant had never seen anything like it! Around fifty people, from across all sections of Edinburgh's Jewish community and much further afield, joined by musicians and friends who regularly get together to play Klezmer music in Edinburgh, crowded into this small vegan Indian restaurant – Edinburgh’s acknowledged though unsupervised kosher restaurant – on Referendum Night, to hear and enjoy the Adrianne Greenbaum trio over a three-course Indian meal.
Adrianne, Michael, and Lev played their hearts out. Their programme featured Scottish and Baroque music as well as Klezmer, and was enhanced by Adrianne’s explanations of the music, and by Michael’s unexpectedly fluent Yiddish!
People made new connections and met old friends, and we even managed to squeeze in a bit of dancing. Members of the audience joined in too: artist Jo Powell, who specialises in drawings of musicians, was amongst the guests and sketched the group, and later in the evening other local klezmer players joined in and then kept the party going after the group had left, including Simon Carlyle, who just happened to have his tuba with him!
One member of the Edinburgh Jewish community said: "I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. It was a lovely and lively mix of music, good company, and good food". Another participant, who had travelled from Glasgow for the event, said, "Adrianne Greenbaum really is a fantastic character. She lifted the whole thing, and really made the party. It was an interesting, unusual, and very nice event with a lovely responsive crowd.”
It really was a fusion event – as one of the local klezmer musicians commented: “It was a great evening: Klezmer music in an Indian restaurant, with American musicians, on the night of the Scottish Referendum!”
Click here, and here, and here to watch some short videos of the trio.
