Port Klezmer

4 December 2015
WRITTEN BY
Jaan Bossier

Jaan Bossier

Musician

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Out of the depths I cry! De Profundis.


A short tour with Port Klezmer/Soloists of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Meeting point this time for rehearsals and a first concert was my home town Bad Schwalbach, in the idyllic German Taunus. Planned was a concert in the Stadtmuseum, but because of the high amount of enthusiastic listeners, we had to look for a bigger location, which we found in the church next door.

A second kind of home play and a full house we had in Landshut, well known for the MCO. Showing different aspects of folk music, before the break we played a selection of the eight pieces by Max Bruch, with the Rumanian Melody as highlight, and the Märchenerzählungen by Robert Schumann. After the break Port Klezmer played the première of our new programme De Profundis.

Federico García Lorca, spine of the programme, was not only known as a poet. He collected Spanish folk songs and performed them with the singer La Argentinita, accompanying her at the piano, improvising! "Writing down the notes," he said, "is the work of a composer." So I took that freedom...
Inspired by his liberal ideas, I arranged Lorca's collection of Spanish folk songs into klezmer music, mixed with my own compositions and Sephardic melodies. The result is a very personal interpretation, coming out of two different worlds, but with the common idea of freedom.

Known in the middle ages as a penitential psalm, De Profundis was transformed by twentieth century artists into a symbol for desperation and misery. I wrote myself a musical version, but today, in the 21st century, I turn the meaning into the positive: De Profundis, out of the depths I cry, a cry for hope. Hope for culture, life, love and humanity!


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