Washington Jewish Music Festival, day one
The annual Washington Jewish Music Festival (which seems to bring in some great stuff every year - the first time I went was two years ago to see Hasidic New Wave and Rashanim, the latter of whom had recently released Masada Rock on Tzadik) kicked off yesterday, jointly with an absolutely enormous Israel @ 60 celebration. Israel @ 60 was a free event going on all day outside on DC’s National Mall; the musical attractions were Regina Spektor and Mashina, apparently a very popular Israeli rock band. Later that night, WJMF sponsored an interesting show at Bohemian Caverns: Ayelet Rose Gottlieb/Anat Fort/Rafi Malkiel, a vocals/piano/trombone trio who recently released an album on, you guessed it, Tzadik.
I went to all of the above. Mashina was first, kicking off a little after 1:15. Their set was relatively straightforward rock-and-roll, totally accessible for the mainstream crowd but thoroughly competent and musical, enough to keep me entertained for a while. They played on the main stage, a typical outdoor festival-style setup, raised four or five feet off the ground, with a barricade extending out from the front of the stage at least ten feet. My press pass got me into the barricaded area, and I shot the first three songs. I left after three not because I was kicked out (there was no three-song rule for this set as far as I could tell), but because I’d stupidly forgotten my earplugs and standing in front of the speakers to take photos was not doing good things for my hearing.
Concert photography is not a particularly creative endeavor most of the time; it can be awfully technically challenging, but it seems like it’s pretty rare to ever get a truly innovative shot. The lack of creativity is even more apparent when shooting outdoor festivals, as the lighting is static and flat. I mostly used my 80-200/2.8 to get in close and capture facial expressions rather than trying to go wide and get creative environmental shots - since the environment was pretty bland, it being mid-afternoon on a sunny day.
For Regina Spektor this became even more the case, as she was performing solo, so I spent my three songs exclusively with my 80-200, mostly at the long end. I had wanted to get some wider shots and some shots of the crowd behind me, but I didn’t realize I was going to be kicked out after three songs (since I wasn’t for Mashina). Oops. In any case, as Chris Owyoung said a little while ago on his blog, Spektor is a joy to shoot - she has an incredibly expressive face and almost always seems to be smiling. All this despite the fact that she didn’t quite seem to be settled in for the first few songs - perhaps because she had to change some lyrics around to accommodate the children in the audience, or simply the fact that she was playing in front of an enormous outdoor audience. She actually forgot the words in the middle of her second song, but handled it in the most endearing way possible, laughing at herself and appealing to her fans in the audience for help:
She played piano and guitar and performed with a beatboxer as well, though for the songs I was able to shoot, she just did one a cappella and two at the piano. Great (though short) set for an enthusiastic audience; her vocal talent was really what stole the show, but she was no slouch on either instrument. I think it would be really interesting to hear her perform with some of the downtown NY scene jazz musicians; she frequents some of the same venues, apparently, like Tonic (RIP) and the Knitting Factory.
I got some good photos, but I never did quite get “The Shot” as they say - the one photo that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Still, pretty happy with what I got overall.
Finally, a couple hours after events on the Mall came to a close, a much more intimate affair took place at Bohemian Caverns, a historic jazz club in the U Street neighborhood that is actually built to look like a cavern when you’re inside. The Gottlieb/Fort/Malkiel trio played a set of “love poetry set to jazz,” which was not surprisingly mostly slow-moving, laid-back vocal jazz. I was impressed by all three musicians’ technical skill - Malkiel was amazingly effective at using the trombone as a textural instrument, Gottlieb has an impressive voice and a whimsical style, and Fort’s work on the ivory keys was what held it all together for me, melodic and beautiful but never too straightforward or obvious. Most of the songs drew from Gottlieb’s album Mayim Rabim on Tzadik, described by the label as “an evocative song cycle based on texts from the erotic Biblical love poems Song of Songs.”
Gottlieb explained some of the lyrics for the monolingual folks in the room, and they were… odd. The last song, for instance, was something like a poem about how “as the apples are to the trees, so my man is among men, and his fruit is sweet in my mouth.” Um… perhaps I’m glad I couldn’t understand the lyrics. :) Regardless, after a long afternoon under the hot sun, this relaxing set of slow jazz was a nice comedown.
Top photo: the crowd reacting to Mashina’s set. Full sets from these concerts are available at my WJMF Flickr set, which I’ll be updating with each new concert I attend (three more through the course of this week).
Tags: WJMF