Review: "Pincus and the Pig"

Several years ago, the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra worked with children's author/illustrator Maurice Sendak to write a Jewish adaptation of "Peter and the Wolf." Sendak retold the story and drew the characters, and Shirim klezmerized Prokofiev's music. The result, "Pincus and the Pig," is truly an all-ages audience pleaser. The piece is available as a recording, but seeing it live is a thrill.

Shirim performed at the Modlin Center's Camp Concert Hall on Sunday, Dec. 2, to a nearly full house. Our seats in the center of the third row gave us an excellent view of the band--clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, tuba and drums--though it may not have been acoustically the best place, as Emily and I agreed it was hard to hear the banjo and piano. A screen above the performers showed Sendak's illustrations during the "Pincus" piece.

The band opened with three traditional klezmer tunes, the kind that electrify the seat cushion, so that anyone who thought they were coming for a little bit of storytime and music would realize, happily, that they were mistaken.

Then Shirim performed five pieces from their "Klezmer Nutcracker," which does to Tchaikovsky's famous piece what Weird Al Yankovic does to... well, to just about any over-played pop song. I loved the woozy "Dance of the Latkes Queen." The interpretations weren't all just musical inside jokes--they were at times even gorgeous and jazzy on their own merit--but I think Helen and Emily got a little tired of the set.

As the main event, "Pincus and the Pig" serves up "Peter and the Wolf" with extra Yiddish on top. From the introduction that identifies each character with an instrument to the triumphant procession at the end, with the duck inside the wolf/pig, "Pincus" follows its model closely. This lets listeners familiar with the original put the oy in enjoy by listening for the Yiddish words throughout the text and anticipating the klezmer twists to the music.

I thought the duck as trombone took some getting used to, but the cat as banjo and grandfather as tuba were perfect. Susan Watts, the narrator, was fabulous, especially as the excitable bird.

Helen, who hadn't known the story at all before today, had a hard time following along, but she understood exactly why, as the littlest animal, the bird was so high-strung. (She also picked up on the moods of the music and would ask, "Why is this music sad?" or "Why is this music loud?" when she needed me to fill her in on the story.)

After the performance, Emily had a hard time articulating what she liked about the show. She said she liked the lighting effects (simple and kind of random, I thought) and how the narration and the music overlapped sometimes, then she tried to explain what she liked about the klezmer music. Finally, she simply said, "I liked how the notes sounded."

What more is there to say?