Nigun News
Nigun - Live at BJC CD Release Concert - May 9.
Lebedik at the Budapest Jazz Club is Nigun’s fourth album, following a live concert disc and two studio CDs. “Lebedik” is a Yiddish word meaning ‘live, vivid, vigorous’, and simply refers to the concert recording on this disc.
Melodies from Jewish liturgy form the basis of the music, and gain new colours and interpretations through András Párniczky’s arrangements. Most songs are part of Kabbalat Shabbat (The Reception of the Shabbat) or are sung during the day on Saturday (2, 3, 5, 6). Observant Jews welcome the Shabbat on Friday evening with prayer and song, and traditionally sing the words of the prayers together, with or without accompaniment. While the melodies can vary in each community, the texts always remain the same.
According to the Gematria, the Kabbalah’s mystical form of numerology, the Jewish people were given the numerical values of Hebrew letters at Mount Sinai, and included them in their calculations in order to decipher the deeper meaning of each word. Mystical numerologists believe that the entire universe can be mapped through these numbers. This concept far precedes Talmudic times, appearing first in the age of Pythagoras, and later served as a means for reaching union with God. Following this idea, the group’s arrangements include carefully composed polyrhythms, using different kinds of meters and various rhythmic planes simultaneously, providing a certain numerical map for the music. This feature is also increasingly popular in contemporary jazz, and characterizes the most current trends of the New York scene.
Live Album
Nigun's recent (May 19.) performance on the stage of the Budapest Jazz Club has been recorded and planned to be released soon as a live album. Until then, three of the tunes recorded that evening are made available as videos:
Jewish iSongBook
This is a great tool for musicians, students and for ALL whom interested in Jewish music. One can use it no matter you're a professional piano player or you just know a few open chords for guitar.
Jewish iSongbook is the first App ever collecting Jewish sheet music. The songs are divided into categories like Klezmer tunes, Z'mirot for Sabbath, pieces for Holidays (Channuka, Pesach) and Weddings, Israeli, Yiddish, Sephardic tunes and Hassidic nigunim. Because of copyright law NO melodies are included, only the chords.
How many times have you been at a Hanukkah or at a Passover ritual where someone calls a tune and you don't know the chords? With iJewish Songbook you'll have the chord changes to all the songs you need.
Or you go to welcome Sabbath for a different place where they sing everything in an other key as you use to? No problem you can comp the songs in different keys because iJewish Songbook will transpose it all for you.
The paper music books are limited with their number of songs contained. The only way to update them is to buy a new one. With iJewish Songbook you have instant access to a library of more than hundred songs right in your pocket and more songs are added regularly with free updates.
Learn more about the app on iTunes and Facebook:
Jewish iSongBook on Facebook.
Nigun's Birtday Celebration!
The Birthday concert series celebrating the 10th birthday of the band with four
performances in September. Back in 2001 the first concert ever of Nigun was on the very end of August. To commemorate to the beginnig the celebration series starts on the 31th August and runs 'till 29th September. Details here.
Features:
- Kristof Bacso - sax
- Istvan Balo - drums
- Jozsef Barcza Horvath - bas
- Peter Bede - sax
- Robert Benko - bass
- Matt Darriau - clarinet, kaval
- Gyorgy Jeszenszky - drums
- Csaba Gavaller - drums
- Miklos Lukacs - cimbalom
- Peter Nagy - bass
- Andras Parniczky - leader, guitar
- Zsolt 'Sarvari' Kovacs - drums
- Daniel Váczi - sax
- Janos Vazsonyi - sax
A sampler from one of the concerts: Birthday 10@ BJC.
2010 November
Nigun's albums available online!
Finally! All the three albums of Nigun are available for purchase at various online distributors: iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon MP3, eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, Myspace Music, Spotify, Liquid Digital, Verizon V-Cast, Shockhound, Last.fm.
Mike Gerber - Jazz Jews
Mike Gerber's book titled Jazz Jews just got published recently by Five Leaves Publications. It is a nice overview of the last decade and mentions thousands of musicians with jewish roots. Among people like Michael Brecker, Terry Gibbs, Benny Goodman, Ben Perowsky, Adam Rogers, Gerber also mentions the band led by András Párniczky: Nigun. You can read a short part of the book about Nigun by clicking on the link here: Nigun
