8. Intercultural Musicking
Reflection in, on, and for Situated Klezmer Ensemble Performance

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the reflective performer practices embedded in the Klezmer Ensemble Performance (KEP) module at The University of Manchester, UK. To set these reflective performer practices in context, we first outline how, as non-Jewish music educators,¹ we understand—and seek to develop our students’ understandings of—the cultural, historical, and other complexities of the music culture (or set of cultures) now referred to as klezmer. The module is situated by these understandings through which we seek to encourage a respectful and informed cultural appreciation of klezmer whilst remaining attentive to the risks of cultural appropriation.² The chapter then introduces the university context for our klezmer teaching with a focus on the performance opportunities available during 2020–21 academic year (when the COVID-19 pandemic-related social-distancing measures were in place). We then introduce the reflective performer frame we promote with our klezmer ensemblists and examine their performance of reflection through the texts they generated to accompany their actual assessed performance, i.e., the texts through which they situate their informed performance intentions. Finally, we conclude with our emerging thinking regarding the value of reflective performer practices in HME.

Our Understanding of Klezmer

The term klezmer comes from the Hebrew כְּלֵי זֶֽמֶר (k’léi zémer) meaning ‘vessel of song’, and it originally referred to a musician rather than to a particular music culture. In the (translated) words of the Yiddish proverb, ‘a wedding without a klezmer is worse than a funeral without tears’.³ These musicians—or klezmorim (the plural form of klezmer)—were essential for the wedding celebrations of the largely Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, and in Eastern Europe more generally. The fortunes of this Jewish music culture, which dates back to the Middle Ages, has waxed and waned. It is a music culture that has been shaped variously by the interplay between religious practices and social life in these communities; the persecution, pogrom, and genocide experienced by those communities; an extensive migratory history and the establishment of new diaspora communities (in the USA for example); the experience of musical-cultural assimilative influences (for example, the influence in the early-middle part of the twentieth century of swing on klezmer in the USA and tango in Argentina); the decline of klezmer’s popularity as the twentieth century progressed; and the USA-driven klezmer revival of the 1970s/80s.⁴ That revival has generated substantial interest in, and a growing literature about, klezmer.⁵ Today, klezmer can be seen, amongst other things, as a thriving, globally-distributed world music genre. Not without controversy,⁶ it is now performed more widely and with changed/ing functions.

Klezmer is now, as it was previously, a dynamic and developing musical practice. For us, in Manchester in 2024, it is one being shaped most immediately by the students’ diverse characteristics and those of their audiences, but shaped, too, by the students’ responses to the archive and contemporary resources available to them. These local particularities are important for the KEP module—thus, it is situated in Manchester (rather than London, or New York, or Kraków, for example); it is in proximity with, but not embedded in, Manchester’s Jewish communities; and it is surrounded by a cultural milieu in which Yiddish and klezmer cultural practices feature very little, now or previously. There are only tantalising references to the klezmer-oriented repertoire of the Jewish wedding bands in Manchester in the early twentieth century.⁷ Despite Manchester’s substantial Jewish communities, klezmer here rarely fulfilled the earlier wedding and celebratory function of music. The revival of the 1970s/80s began in the USA but also generated interest elsewhere. Thus, in Manchester, there were klezmer pub sessions from the early 1990s. But, by the time the university klezmer ensemble was established in 2011, these revivalist pub sessions had largely ceased. Interest had waned, and when we first approached the Manchester Jewish Museum in 2012 with a proposal for a klezmer-based Chanukah concert, the response was cautious: the CEO commented, ‘we’ve tried klezmer before but there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for it’. Since then, a market has been relocated, or generated, and klezmer performances and teaching now have a stable footing in the university and beyond.

Given the almost invisible imprint of klezmer in Manchester’s immigrant Jewish communities of the early twentieth century, we can say that klezmer has gained popularity locally through the revival surge, rather than being revived through that surge. It is now being performed largely because the students (and a small local community of musicians) are there to play it. As they do so, they create new spaces and new audiences beyond both the academic and local Jewish contexts. Through these spaces, they experience the developing functions of klezmer in twenty-first- century Manchester: for entertainment, traditional dancing, celebrating cultural heritage, and as a vehicle for audiences to connect with their own memories or cultural identity.

Our Klezmer Education Context

The KEP module

The small (10-credit) KEP module was introduced in 2011 as an elective course within the 360-credit undergraduate curriculum in the music department at The University of Manchester. It recruits music students in their second or third (and final) year of study on a programme which has ‘Western’ music theory and practice at its core as built on the three mutually-supporting areas of musicology, performance, and composition. The programme has, however, become more diverse in recent years. Thus, whereas the KEP module was initially an outlier along with Gamelan in focusing on non-canonical Western music cultures, it now forms part of a cluster of such performance modules with a focus on musics other than ‘Western Classical’.

These academic aspects are also important for anchoring the module: it is based in a university (rather than a conservatoire); it forms part of an undergraduate music programme (rather than contributing to a more interdisciplinary programme); it is assessed with a focus on ensemble performance of klezmer rather than on individual competence or virtuosity in klezmer (although the latter forms part of the requirements of the former); it is designed for students who are highly-competent both musically and academically; and the majority of the students it attracts have no Jewish affiliation or heritage. Acknowledging these anchors, a distinctive methodology has developed for the module over the last decade.8

Cultural Translation and Intercultural Musicking

Waligórska considers klezmer performance to be in its afterlife in Germany and Poland especially. Following her lead, we conceptualise the ensemble’s performances not as ‘an impoverishment of the culture of origin’, but more as informed, respectful, skilful cultural translation enabling ‘new modes of encountering the other and expressing the self’.9 Here, the focus is less on ‘who is making use of the culture text’ [i.e., klezmer] and more on ‘how they are doing it’. Thus, we encourage our mostly non-Jewish music students to develop historically-, culturally-, and functionally-informed understandings of klezmer’s complexities, but also to situate their performances of it within an appreciation of how the klezmer as a music culture is evolving in our local context and how it might develop in their own portfolio of practices.

Whilst the ensemble is located and performs in an academically-oriented music department, the students also perform the music for Chanukah concerts in the Manchester Jewish Museum, for well-being and reminiscence sessions in the local Jewish residential homes, for gatherings of the Association of Jewish Refugees (Holocaust survivors and their families), and for Muslim-Jewish Forum events. We see these klezmer performance opportunities and experiences as sites of ‘intercultural musicking’.10 This is an extension of Christopher Small’s term ‘musicking’, which captures the idea that ‘music is not a thing […] but an activity, something that people do’ as they ‘take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing [sic], by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing’.11 Through the term ‘intercultural musicking’, we bring Small’s process-oriented approach to music together with understandings—such as Adrian Holliday’s—of the intercultural as process-oriented and emergent rather than static.12 Following Marshall H. Singer, we see our ensemblists not as being fixed in their cultural and music culture identities, but rather being culturally (and musically) complex and unique.¹³ Small’s understanding, and our extension of it, are underpinned by a ‘verbing’ move evident in other coinages such as language  languaging, that is, the way in which people use language to make sense of their world and, indeed, help to shape it.14 While not following the name noun+ing format, this process-oriented perspective is also evident in Holliday’s proposal that the word ‘culture’ be attached not to regional or national reference points but, rather, small social groupings or activities wherever there is cohesive behaviour.¹⁵ With this in mind, we like to think of the emergent culture of our klezmer ensemble and not simply focus on the origins of klezmer.

The klezmer module also provides opportunities for ‘performing ethnomusicology’.¹⁶ For almost all the KEP students concerned, the module represents an encounter with musical Otherness, an encounter which seeks not only to develop their awareness of other musics but also to enrich their intercultural awareness through music. It is an encounter mediated by us, their tutors. We, too, first experienced klezmer as a musical Other. Thus, the KEP module represents, for both students and tutors, a space for developing what Mantle Hood termed ‘bi-musicality’, analogous perhaps with being bi-lingual.17 Bi-musicality has been critiqued for its somewhat static view of the music cultures in question, that is, this music plus that music.¹⁸ The complexity of, and diversity within, music cultures might be better understood to be polymusical.¹⁹ As such, musicians need what John S. Bailey terms ‘intermusability’, which Henry Stobart notes, ‘suggests the possibilities of overlaps and continuities in skills, competences, and other forms of musical experience’.²⁰ We understand the KEP module to be less a meeting place for two static music cultures, and more a space for developing transmusicality, by which we mean students’ musically-complex and musically-unique engagement with the musical resources in their musically-complex environment.

Situated Performance

The KEP module is framed by a focus on situated performance, that is, performer attentiveness to the particularities of each klezmer ensemble performance. Thus, we encourage the ensemblists to think about the ways in which each performance is situated:

• in time (e.g. a lunch-time vs. an evening concert),
• in space (e.g. in the Manchester Jewish Museum vs. in the department concert hall),
• in purpose (e.g. for Chanukah party vs. departmental concert),
• in relationship (e.g. for city dignitaries vs. klezmer aficionados),
• in function (e.g. for reminiscence sessions in care home vs. entertainment),
• in logistical possibilities/constraints etc (e.g. for a quintet rather than the full ensemble), and
• in music cultures (e.g. for an Old World wedding vs. klezmer swing in the New World).

Using these and similar parameters, each year we invite the ensemblists to consider what aspects of the environment in which the performance is taking place may be shaping how the performance develops. We do so through prompts of different types, such as:

• chrono-topical: Given the rich history and development of klezmer as a music culture, what are the implications and possibilities for, and responsibilities when, performing klezmer in Manchester in the twenty-first century?
• socio-political: Given the politics swirling around klezmer as a music culture, what are the implications for, and responsibilities of, the ensemble performing klezmer for/in particular performance contexts?
• contextual-performative: Given the contrasting characteristics of the performance opportunities available, what are the implications for, and affordances of, performing klezmer for each of these performance contexts?

The 2020–21 academic year was much impacted by the global Covid-19 pandemic. In previous and subsequent years, student performance opportunities arose through onsite concerts in diverse venues, including the annual Chanukah party in the old synagogue which forms the centre-piece of the Manchester Jewish Museum, and the assessed performance in the concert hall in the music department. However, because of the social-distancing measures in place in 2020–21, all performance opportunities were based on the practice of online presentation of filmed performances that had been curated in advance. These were as listed in Table 8.1.

Table 8.1. Performance opportunities for the 2020–21 cohort of the KEP module.

Our thinking is primarily informed by two writers: Donald A. Schön, who, as a musician himself, was able to illustrate his reflective processes with reference to musicians;23 and Thomas S. C. Farrell, a second-language teacher educator with whose work we are familiar through our roles as educators as well as musicians.²⁴ With Farrell, we share an interest in the role of the reflective process in professional development.²⁵ For us, the professionals concerned are musicians-in-training or, more accurately, performers-in-the-making. Whilst the reflective processes we explore may have value for other ensemble performance development, we are concerned most directly with students’ reflective practices in their development as klezmer ensemblists. Our aspiration is that the way in which reflection is embedded in their KEP module will support them as they make sense of their developing experience of KEP itself, and their competence and confidence in it.

Schön argued that professionals’ knowledge is implicit in their action, and that this ‘knowing-in-action’ is the distinctive mode of ‘ordinary practical knowledge’.26 He illustrates this musically:

When good jazz musicians improvise together, they also manifest a ‘feel for’ their material and they make on-the-spot adjustments to the sounds they hear […]. As [they] feel the direction of the music that is developing out of their interwoven contributions, they make new sense of it and adjust their performance to the new sense they have made.27

In this case, the musicians are performing their knowing-in-action through their feel for the music. We want our students, as becoming-professionals, to value their knowing-in-action or what we term their ‘knowing-in-performance’. We hope that, through the reflective processes of the module, their knowing-in-performance can become the ordinary practical knowledge of their klezmer performance practice. However, to a large extent, this aspect of their development as klezmer ensemblists remains unknowable through the assessment-oriented reflective performer practices of the module.

Following Schön, our belief is that klezmer ensemblists come to be experts in their professional performance role as they experience certain performance situations. Thus, they develop expectations and techniques, learning what to look for, and how to respond to what they encounter, both in and with/through the ensemble. For Schön, a unique situation involves circumstances that are uncertain, unpredictable, and interesting. It makes professionals become aware of the experienced situation, think of it, and act upon it. Unique situations are both puzzling and relevant to professionals’ practice. Again, applying this to our context, we work on the understanding that, when our student klezmer ensemble performers experience particular ensemble performances, they are likely at some points in the performance to engage in what we term ‘reflection in klezmer ensemble performance’. During a performance, they may experience situations where they become aware of the need to adjust their performance to continue making sense of the direction of the music that is developing and the materials they have. For example, the electric bass player may adjust the volume settings on their amp after sensing that their part was insufficiently present, or the flute player might decide not to persevere with the switch to their alto flute because they are aware of intonation issues. In such cases, the ensemblists—in keeping with other professionals—are ‘reflecting-in-practice’,28 at least to some degree.

Unique situations thus provide individuals with opportunities to reflect upon their own tacit knowing-in-action, their own practice, and the particular context in which they work. Klezmer ensemble performances—especially those away from our departmental concert hall, for example Chanukah festivities in the local Jewish community—can often take our students out of their performance comfort zone, providing them with not only new musical experiences but also encounters with ‘Otherness’ and opportunities for intercultural learning.29 Such situations can indeed be uncertain, unpredictable, and interesting, and also puzzling and relevant to the ensemblists’ KEP practice. For example, ensemblists in previous years have commented on the disconcerting experience of playing in very close proximity to the audience at the Jewish Museum. In these performances, they became intimately aware, in ways unfamiliar from their previous concert hall performances, of individual audience responses to the emerging music, for example the changing breathing through excitement, the teary eyes of emotion, and the animated glances to other audience members as they recognised the opening of a familiar tune. As ensemblists, our students feed off this audience response, and they fine-tuned their performance accordingly; they ‘played to the gallery’ once they felt the audience’s appreciation of the performance.

Reflection–in–Action

Schön further explained that reflection-in-action is a spiral process that begins when professionals experience a unique situation. It has three stages: appreciation, action, and reappreciation. In the appreciation stage of the spiral, professionals draw on their ‘familiar repertoire’ to compare the experienced unique situation with previous relevant experiences. For Schön, ‘familiar repertoire’ refers to all the experiences that someone has lived so far, experiences carrying the ‘overarching theories, by which individuals make sense of phenomena’.30 By drawing on previous relevant experiences, professionals can describe the experienced unique situation in terms of a familiar one, thereby developing an initial understanding of it.³¹ We see a parallel as our klezmer ensemblists compare the unique klezmer performance to relevant experiences in their familiar musician’s repertoire. This is a comparison between the new performance and all and anything that helps them make sense of that new performance experience. It is one which helps them explain that new experience in terms of old/familiar musician frames of reference, thereby giving them an initial understanding of the new performance experience.

The utility and adequacy of such appreciation is discovered in the stage of action.³² This is where professionals think of ways in which they can approach the unique situation and operationalise the action that they think will help them to satisfactorily deal with it. In this stage, klezmer ensemblists think of ways in which they can approach the new performance situation and also operationalise such ways with the objective of satisfactorily dealing with the new performance context. When professionals develop further meanings of the unique situation, they enter the stage of reappreciation. The outcome of this stage is a ‘new theory’ that comprises the professionals’ practical knowledge as emergent from experience.³³ In this stage, klezmer ensemblists develop further meanings (that is, new theory) of the particular performance. Thus, their practical klezmer-ensemblists’ knowledge emerges from further action. Nahielly Palacios, Zeynep Onat-Stelma, and Richard Fay, informed by their own work and by Farrell’s ideas on reflection, argue that the formulation and operationalisation of the new emerging theory is an additional stage of the spiral process of reflection-in-action developed by Schön.34 They refer to this stage as further action as it involves purposeful planning and operationalisation of the emergent new theories. For the purposes of this chapter and to avoid confusion between what has become commonly known as reflection-in-action (following the interpreters of Schön’s work, see section below), we refer to the spiral process of reflection-in-action described by Schön as the reflective spiral.

Schön further argued that reflection-in-action may not be very rapid because it is bound to the action-present which can ‘stretch over minutes, hours, days, even weeks or months’.35 This idea is that professionals can engage in the stages of reflection-in-action over a period of time. Schön suggests that professionals can reflect on their knowing-in-practice ‘in the relative tranquillity of a post-mortem’ when they think back on ‘… a situation they have lived through, and they explore the understandings they have brought to their handling of the situation’.36 Based on this statement, interpreters of his work suggest that there are two different moments in time in which reflection can occur, namely:³⁷

1. while experiencing a unique situation (reflection-in-action); and
2. after having experienced a unique situation (reflection-on-action).

1. while experiencing a particular performance unique situation (or what we term reflection-in-performance); and
2. after having experienced a particular performance unique situation (or what we term reflection-on-performance).

Based on the interpreters of Schön’s work, reflection-in-action has been understood as thinking about experience whilst that experience is occurring.38 The phrases ‘thinking while doing something’ and ‘thinking on your feet’ are frequently used when scholars talk about this mode of reflection.³⁹ In our adapted understanding, reflection-in-performance can be understood as thinking about performing whilst that performance is occurring (that is, ‘thinking while performing’). Reflection-on-action has been understood as the retrospective analysis and thoughtful consideration that professionals perform with the purpose of preparing themselves for future practice.40 Again, by extension, reflection-on-performance can be understood as the retrospective analysis and thoughtful consideration that klezmer ensemblists engage with in order to prepare themselves for future practice. This understanding overlaps to some extent with the next idea.

Later, Farrell introduced the notion of ‘reflection-for-action’ to indicate the relevance of thinking about future actions which can help improve teachers’ practice.41 This mode of reflection involves thinking proactively with the purpose of developing a plan of action that includes what to do, why, how, and when. For us, reflection-for-performance can be understood as prospective thinking about future actions which can help improve the ensemblists’ performance, a mode of reflection involving thinking proactively with the purpose of developing a plan of action that includes what to do, why, how, and when with regard to performance.

All in all, it is our understanding that the three modes of performer reflection above may involve all or some of the stages of the reflective spiral described by Schön. For example, when performers engage in reflection-in-performance (that is, thinking while doing something) and are able to develop an initial understanding of the unique situation, act upon it, develop new theories and plan for future similar encounters right on the spot, they will be engaging in all of the stages of the reflective spiral. However, following Schön’s rationale, it could also be the case that professionals might engage in some, rather than all, of the stages of the spiral while doing something. For instance, in rehearsal when developing suitable musical arrangements, KEP students may remain stuck in the appreciation stage, repeatedly looking at moment from different angles or perspectives, and trying to problem-solve without really dealing with it in action and not arriving at a new understanding of it (that is, they talk about potential options rather than trying them out and seeing what happens in order to hone the arrangement). From observation, they may also get stuck in the action stage: for instance, within a session scenario, a non-klezmer-playing cajon player may hear the group performing a zhok, a klezmer dance-type in triple time, and draw upon their previous knowledge of triple-time percussion playing and provide a waltz-like accompaniment, unaware that the zhok has a distinctive omission of the second beat; if the cajon player were to continue playing a waltz rhythm while the more klezmer-literate musicians around them play a zhok rhythm, they would be stuck in the action stage and never reach the reappreciation stage. Further, when professionals engage in reflection-on-performance (that is, retrospectively analysing a situation), the assumption is that they will be able to go through all of the stages of the reflective spiral as they will have the time to deeply analyse it. Finally, when performers engage in reflection-for-performance, they will be able to purposefully plan for subsequent similar unique situations (for example, playing ‘Odessa Bulgar’ for a dance, not for a concert), devise the action possibilities (for example, removing conventional arrangement features that de-emphasise the driving bulgar rhythm that is important for articulating the dance) and wait for the further understandings of them (that is, new theory). Hence, they will be engaging with some of the stages of the reflective spiral.

For the ensemblists’ first two performances (see above), the actual playing was not assessed; rather, it was the reflections (of various kinds) about these performances which were assessed. Because our focus in this chapter is on reflective processes rather than actual performance and its assessment, we have chosen not to focus on the reflection (also contained in the students’ submitted assessment portfolio) regarding their third video performance. The process of reflection for this generation of klezmer ensemblists involved the stages listed below (see Table 8.2). These build upon the sense of situated performance emphasised in the module as well as on the reflective spiral and other reflective aspects discussed above.

Table 8.2. Performances emphasised in the KEP module.

Given that these comments were for assessment purposes and were generated some time after the performance itself, it is unsurprising that Student B’s text presents both thinking subsequent to the performance (that is, reflection on their performance) as coupled to more forward-looking considerations (reflection for performance). Her assessment text does not present any meaningful moments of reflection during the performance itself (reflection-in-performance).

For example, I kept my sekund [i.e. accompaniment] very consistent and unvaried throughout as it took me a while to get to grips with the chords and different rhythmic patterns I was following in each section, as well as the misheberakh mode. Therefore, I tended to alternate between two or three notes in a repeated pattern rather [than] moving fluidly between different notes in the triad. I also didn’t double-stop, a technique which, in retrospect, would have been effective as it is characteristic of klezmer string playing. In terms of my primash [i.e. melody] playing, I experimented with playing down the octave in places, especially in the string sections to add some variety (as I am the only viola player). However I did not attempt any counter melodies - something I think would have added more depth to the performance.

By the end of her performance of reflection regarding this second online performance, Student B reported being pleased that they had ‘worked particularly hard in the arranging process to create a wide variety of textures in the performance as this really highlighted the ensemble “feel” of our performance’. Her Reflective Note ends with a strong statement of reflection-for-performance:

More playing experience, discussion and listening aided my revision of [my opening solo]. I learnt specifically from the Doyna form for inspiration

My most listened to klezmer band at this point had been Frank London (and his Klezmer Brass all-stars). This seemed a natural place for me to listen as I am a brass player and London and his crew really showcase the capabilities of klezmer brass, with virtuosity, big heterophony and charismatic loud playing.

But, he notes, ‘this listening might be too far away from the slow, quiet introduction that was needed for [Performance 2]’. He has come to recognise that his listening so far of mainly post-revival klezmer performers ‘did not have much in common with our ensemble’. This realisation took him on an exploratory journey back into the older, archive recordings of Doynas and other introductions. Here, he found ‘a perfect example … Kleftico Vlachiko’, which he then partly transcribed in order ‘to fit my part around the melody of [the tune in our arrangement]’.

While a close listening of the two curated video performances is needed to gauge the full impact of this reflection and the detailed preparation it stimulated, such a listening does support our sense that the reflection is of value in his developing KEP awareness, competence and confidence.

After attending multiple events at KlezNorth, including the jam sessions, a session with Ilana Cravitz on bringing melodies to life, and a transcription session, I feel I could add even more to my performance in the video. I would like to add some counter melodies when I am playing sekund to complement the melody, and I have more ideas for how to embellish the melody, such as varying the way I play held notes and experimenting more with krekhtsn. (Student H)

The diversity of reflective foci similarly surprised us. There were reflections, variously, on the technical (including arrangement aspects), the technological, and group/ensemble aspects, as well as on performativity and situatedness (historical, event-specific, immediate constraints/affordances, function/purpose). There was also an intriguing mix of individually-focused and group-focused reflections. For example, Student D commented:

Further, we can see that these Reflective Notes are clearly functioning as a demonstration of the students’ credit-worthy commentary, that is, they are an assessment-focused performance of reflection, but they are also articulating something more immediate, raw, and relevant to the developing-performer process. As we listened in on their reflection-informed discussions as an ensemble between the first and second curated video performances, their desire to improve their performance was clearly evident. This discussion was no box-ticking exercise to please their tutors. Rather, their contextual attentiveness and increased understandings of klezmer were to the fore. We could see how the reflective-performer practices we hoped to instil in them were already leading to the kind of performance outcomes for which the module aimed. We are encouraged by the ways in which their reflections seem to be functioning as a vehicle for expressing their contextual knowledge about klezmer as well as being a means for them to improve their KEP most immediately but also their transmusicality more generally.

We are realising that reflective thinking that focuses on the situatedness of klezmer seems to create a connectedness to the modern living tradition and practice of klezmer, and, relatedly, foregrounds something historical and intrinsic to the lives of earlier klezmorim. The benefits of the former orient the KEP module as a practical ‘extra string to your bow’ of a modern working musician, since the students are having to think about music as functional—as for someone and/or something. Forging connections between the ensemblists and the living local tradition as well as emphasising reflective skills to navigate that music culture, enables (we believe) students to more easily continue this tradition beyond their 10-credit module. Perhaps this is part of our own agenda—as klezmer aficionados cultivating this music culture—but it does give students skills that may often be regarded as extraneous within music degrees in a university setting (as opposed to the industry ‘training’ you might find more commonly at conservatoires) and highlights our emergent, non-static approach to klezmer culture (or set of cultures).

The Zoom cohort of 2020–21 forced us to rethink our methodology; there were both constraints on what we could do but also new affordances. The latter included the foregrounding of reflection as linked to the curated videos performances. The need to create performance artefacts in lieu of a live performance meant students were able to more critically reflect on something tangible rather than having to remember key moments of the live performance. While the immediacy of reflection-in-performance was of a different kind with curated performances than it would have been with live ones, this enforced performance practice enabled a more structured approach to reflection, one for which we as examiners also had more tangible reference points. 

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Links/Resources

Michael Kahan Kapelye, ‘Odessa Bulgar - Michael Kahan Kapelye - Muslim Jewish Forum Performance’, YouTube, uploaded by Callum Batten-Plowright Music, 6 December 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaeS6rbYC_c&list=PL1D469599FFE5C9DE&index=20

Michael Kahan Kapelye, ‘The Michael Kahan Kapelye ensemble plays “Odessa Bulgar”’, YouTube, uploaded by Music Department, University of Manchester, 17 March 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2531LXz7PQ&list=PL1D469599FFE5C9DE&index=24