NY-Klezmer and Tzadik etc in Stuttgart Ost

at Laboratorium today 20.30, Daniel Kahn and The Painted Bird: by Jewish-Detroiter singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn on vocals, accordion, piano and guitar with East German Johannes Paul Graesser on fiddle, US expat composer Michael Tuttle on upright bass and a rotating roster of some of Berlin and New Yorks best young Klezmer and Balkan players, the band was formed in Berlin in fall of 2005. Guest artists on the CD include NY downtown Tzadik players Brandon Seabrook & Eric Rosenthal (Naftule’s Dream), Holland’s rising yiddish folk diva Niki Jacobs (Nikitov), and members of Berlin’s “Grinstein’s Mishpoche” and “Shikker Vi Lot.” Like the grotesque Jerzy Kosinski novel from which they take their name, The Painted Bird reminds us that even if man is only an animal, he can still sing.

Unica Zürn

Unica Zürn photographed by Man Ray in 1956. She was born in Berlin in 1917 and jumped out of the window in 1970 in Paris. She wrote a weird and beautiful novel, Der Mann im Jasmin. The Jasmin Man is in fact the Belgian writer Henri Michaux (see previous post) that she met in Paris. Michaux provided her pencils and papers to draw when she was locked in a psychiatric hospital. Her mother was part of the elite nazi society. She also had a long and painful love story with the surrealist drawer Hans Bellmer.