Category — KlezFiction

Last month, when Oakwood Club, a Cleveland Heights yekkie (German Jewish) country club, went under, the powers-that-be (charitable foundations, city government, the club’s board of trustees) came to Yiddishe Cup for ideas to reinvent the place.  The machers were considering a Jewish theme park.

Yiddishe Cup said no thanks.  We weren’t going to participate in a Yiddishland Epcot.  Not our thing.  We won’t even play Fiddler on the Roof unless the audience begs.  And they do.  (And we play it.)

The Oakwood Club machers begged Yiddishe Cup to take a second look at the theme park idea.  We did.

The Yiddishland theme vied with the steering committee’s Plan B, called “Oakwood Park, an Oasis for People and Wildlife.”  That plan was just a front for owls, hawks, woodpeckers, songbirds, foxes, flying squirrels and dragonflies.  The old golf course would become a meadow.

Songbirds don’t pay the bills.

A Friday night klezmer shabbat would work.  It would feature a very lite, ecumenical Yiddishe Cup. Yiddishe Cup has a piece — “Friday Night Service-able” — with no words, like a jazz mass.

We’ve done the number a few times.  It’s basically a D-minor drone with a lot of modal improvising on top.  The composition is 45 minutes to an hour.  We’ve had a few listeners/worshippers “fall out,” or faint.

A Yiddishe Cup klezmer shabbat would draw visitors from Columbus, Pittsburgh and Detroit.  And they would want to stay over.  So we would put them up at Oakwood. We would find space.

Beat this: For $450 per person, the out-of-towner gets a Friday night klezmer shabbat (with brisket and fries), the hotel room, and a Saturday morning round-robin tennis tournament with kiddush (sanctification/vino) and coconut bars. Followed by a nap, followed by golf and swimming.

Need an extra day? Take a hike on the Tribute to Reform Rabbis exercise trail.

Sunday afternoon would be Jewish wedding central, featuring the house band, the one and only . . .
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Readers’ advisory: This post is made up.  Fiction. Based on the fact Oakwood Club is closing and is for sale.
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1 of 2 posts for 2/10/10.  Please see the post below too.

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This just in . . . the lineup for the klezmer clarinetists’ all-star game:

Andy Statman ss

Good hands in the altissimo register.

Marcel Salomon 1b

More Dutch than Honus Wagner. Flying Dutchman II.

Margot Leverett 2b

Good with grace notes.

David Krakauer rf

Mr. Twinkle Toes. Moves lightly over the clarinet break.

Don Byron cf

Eccentric, yet loved. “That’s just Don being Don.”

Michael Winograd c

Young enough to crouch for three hours.

Ilene Stahl 3b

Best Jewish third-baseman since Al Rosen.

Glenn Dickson lf

Ripken-esque.  Can play the entire Nutcracker without water.

Kurt Bjorling dh

Can drive notes to any field: right, left, jazz, klez.

Moshe Berlin p

Has super-wiggly vibrato and Hoyt Wilhelm longevity.

Joel Rubin coach

Two-time NCAA klezmer coach of the year.

Hankus Netsky mgr

Best first name.  Better even than “Honus.”  It doesn’t matter  Hankus is  more of a sax/piano guy.

National anthem by Yiddishe Cup:

” . . . And the party planner’s red glare,
The seltzer bottles bursting in air.”
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2 of 2 posts for 7/8/09

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