1. Jewish Renaissance Magazine. Vol 3 summer 2004
CONTEMPORARY INSPIRATION - THE JEWISH EAST END CONTINUES TO PROVIDE INSPIRATION FOR NEW WORKS
Stenclmusic is a one woman ensemble piece, a quartet of local lives - the schneider, the bakker, the meidl and the mamme - which together make up the lost rhythms and cadences of Stencl’s East End.
These parts were all sensitively played by virtuoso clarinettist and actress Neyire Ashworth while all the supporting roles were taken by her clarinet. An original score, composed by Rachel Stott, brilliantly dramatised the ups and downs, the romance and hardship of Jewish Whitechapel life through witty nods to all genres of Ashkenazic musical form: Klezmer music, Yiddish song, Chassidic melodies, liturgical and cantorial music.
Every detail of Stenclmusic’s musical vocation of East End life was lapped up by appreciative audience members, for whom this trip down memory lane was authentic without being schmaltzy. You cold smell the platzels fresh from the oven, which ”filled the young ones with the promise of riches”, now filling the old ones with the memories of childhood.
Scene changes saw old and contemporary images of Brick Lane, Columbia Road and other Whitechapel hot spots projected onto a large backdrop, to the music of Stencl’s poetry, recited in Yiddish by the legendary Majer Bogdanski, now 92, and in English translation by the poet Stephen Watts. Watts himself has assumed the mantle of a latter day Whitechapel Poet and is a regular member of Toynbee Hall’s weekly Fraynt Fun Yiddish group, which has been going since the mid-1930s.
This was not a play about Stencl himself but about his great love - his Whitechapel.
When asked if he would not be happier in Israel, he famously replied, “Possibly, possibly……I dare say I could find in Israel too my Whitechapel”. Stencl’s poems are a paean to this now vanished world and none more movingly so than The Last Jew Leaves Whitechapel, a lament for the area which after two generations is “stripped of its kosher thread”.
Director Philip Parr, of the Swaledale Festival, deserves particular credit for his restrained direction, sensitive handling of an emotional subject and judicious balancing of poetry, music and narrative.
4. Darlington and Stockton Times - Fri 4th June 2004
Stenclmusic at Swaledale
‘What is the connection between Reeth Memorial Hall, Swaledale Festival and the East End of London?
The answer is a multimedia show of words, pictures and music tracing the history and traditions of Jewish life in two events that drew highly enthusiastic and capacity audiences and made a very good start to the three-week festival.
Stenclmusic was dominated by the remarkable solo clarinet (live and recorded) of Neyire Ashworth who also gave voice to strong, telling and emotive portrayals as tailor, baker, young girl and mother.
The performance was limited only by the constraints of the venue’s single-level sight lines…’
3.
Jewish Quarterly - summer 2004
Swaledale in Yorkshire may not strike you as a centre of Yiddish interest, but out of the Swaledale Festival has come the beautiful Stenclmusic, a dramatic evocation of the Jewish East End based on the poetry of Avrom Stencl. It is a masterpiece of suggestion and restraint, using only one clarinettist (Neyire Ashworth), a bare stage, for costume changes and the witty, dramatic musical score of Rachel Stott to capture the rhythms and cadences of Whitechapel life. Through music, the stage is at once peopled with tailor’s begging for work at the chazzemark, and then deserted as a three part fugue laments the blacklisting of early unionists. ‘Shabbas’ is a chazonishe-style melody, which bleeds into mourning for the last Jew of Whitechapel; after only two generations, the East End has been ‘stripped of its kosher thread’
2. European Association for Jewish Culture Magazine 2004
STENCLMUSIC - SOUNDS AND IMAGES OF THE EAST END OF LONDON
The composer Rachel Stott and the clarinettist and performance artist Neyire Ashworth collaborated with the poet Stephen Watts to create Stenclmusic, an unusual spectacle inspired by the charismatic Yiddish poet Avrom Stencl (1887 - 1983). The project was directed by Philip Parr.
Avrom Stencl lived in the East End of London through much of the 20th century. In his own words, the East End was Europe’s last shtetl; today it is home to immigrant communities from the Indian sub-continent. Stencl’s life was inextricably linked to the history of that area and its vibrant Yiddish culture. The Yiddish Writer’s Group, which he and others established in the 1930’s, continues to meet to this day.
Stenclmusic is a solo instrumental theatre music piece and a visual spectacle, which draws on Stencl’s work and the memories of the now almost vanished Jewish community of he East End. It combines stories and songs, old and new images with specially composed music. The show makes extensive use of interviews with former Jewish inhabitants of he East End; the spoken texts are in Yiddish and in English translation.
Stenclmusic was first shown as a work in progress at the Swaledale Festival in Yorkshire in 2003. It premiered at the Oxford House in London’s East End in April 2004 and played again to capacity audiences at the 2004 Swaledale Festival. A DVD recording preserves this remarkable document for posterity
www.jewishcultureineurope.org
